That Familiar Feeling
by chezchuckles
Summary: AU: carolina17 had this idea: What if Kate's mother was never murdered but her father was instead? This Kate Beckett never went to the police academy, grew up under the shadow of her mother's ambition, and has her own wall to deal with. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1: Friday Night

**That Familiar Feeling**

* * *

><p>I've been living for the weekend<br>But no not anymore  
>Here comes that familiar feelin'<br>That Friday's famous for  
>Yeah I'm lookin' for some action<br>And it's out there somewhere  
>You can feel the electricity<br>All in the evening air

'Bright Lights, Bigger City' CeeLo Green

* * *

><p>Kate Beckett walks into the court house, adjusts the cuffs of her immaculately pressed dress shirt, and puts her briefcase down beside the prosecutor's table. She takes a slow look at the defense's table and has to ruthlessly crush the fluttering of her stomach. And no, that's not her heart.<p>

Richard Castle.

She never expected, in a thousand years, to have to prosecute him. Of course, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, indecent exposure, and theft of government property are pretty serious charges - and all in one night - so maybe she was wrong about him. Maybe this is all there is to the famous Richard Castle.

She hates this side of her job. Seeing the ugly truth. Her mother's work as a DA seemed so righteous and rewarding when Kate was a kid. So of course she became a lawyer, just like her mother, and went straight to the DA's office for her first job.

She hates her job dealing with petty crime, misdemeanors, and what they call 'soft' felonies. She longs to be put in the District Attorney's Investigative Division but the seniority you need for that one is. . .insurmountable. Not even her mother has enough clout for that. And Kate Beckett would never, in a million years, use her mother's political power to acquire a coveted position.

But she's thought about it a lot.

Still. This is her job; this is what she does.

Before the judge enters the room, before the legal hearing can even begin, Kate touches her late father's watch, bulky on her wrist, and checks the time. Still running precisely, firmly, like her father's guidance.

Words live on, words keep going even when people don't. Her father imparted a good deal of them to his only child; Kate's had twenty-two years with her father before he decided to play the hero in a corner store robbery, got himself shot by the guy holding it up. Jim Beckett was never able to stand by. And while Kate admired that when he was alive, she hates it now that he's dead.

Putting your life on the line for a stranger is a romantic gesture, a grand and lofty ideal perhaps. But it doesn't work out in the real world.

In the real world, you just get shot.

* * *

><p>Rick Castle checks out the prosecutor, lets his eyes drift down her endless legs, his heart picking up. Funny. First time that's happened in awhile.<p>

Fresh from his second divorce, being 'consoled' by friends who aren't his friends but are hers, Richard Castle has landed himself in hot water on this one. His daughter will *not* be happy. He'll have to raise her allowance. Again. Probably grovel.

And definitely ditch the guys who've been riding his coattails all evening. SOBs, all of them, taking his clothes when he tried to wash the vomit off his back in the fountain. Of course, it was *his* idiot idea to grab the horse and take off after them.

Police horse. Right.

Time to stop the drinking too.

But Meredith just brings out the best in him, doesn't she? Next time she comes to the city, he'll politely refuse the fun sex and the wild drinking and her bastard friends.

Good thing his lawyer is the best in the city. If he throws enough money at it, they'll drop the charges.

Maybe this time though, he won't have to throw money around. He'll just curl his hand around the back of that woman's neck and pull her against his body, let the prosecutor engage in her own round of discovery, find enough evidence to convict them both-

He stands up at the prodding of his lawyer as the judge comes into the room. Has to grit his teeth to control his reaction to the woman at the other table. Across the aisle. Down the aisle. He watched her walk down the courtroom aisle and visions leapt into his head, words aching to be written, a whole lifetime he wants to create. For her. About her.

*That* hasn't happened in awhile either.

He wants to get her into a flimsy white dress and run his hand up her thigh as she pretends not to notice him. (Yeah, she did that too when she first walked in. Ignored him so pointedly that he kept his eyes open for the moment - and then, yeah, she checked him out, thoroughly, and that tiny spot of color appeared at her throat, but there was too much disappointment in her eyes and he had to look away).

The court clerk reads the charges; this is just a hearing. He doesn't enter a plea; the lawyer has tricks up his sleeve. An arbitration meeting is called instead; the judge kicks them out. It's late Friday afternoon and he has the weekend free at least.

Castle gets to watch the lovely Katherine Beckett walk back up that aisle in a razor of a pencil skirt that shows every damn line, her kitten heels so high, so impossibly high that she would fit right up against him well. Like a matched pair.

He feels like he already knows her.

His lawyer tugging on his elbow, Rick follows behind her, imagines taking her hair down and running his hands through it as he devours her mouth-

"Ms. Beckett. Kate-" his attorney calls out.

Kate? Even better than stuffy Katherine. Kate is a name you can call out in the darkness of the bedroom, groan into her mouth-

Damn. He's never had a woman affect him like this. She's model gorgeous, so much so it almost hurts to look at her. But it's not that. It's something else. It's the story in her eyes.

She turns on her heel, a neat pivot that brings her to face them.

"Mr. Castle is interested in resolving this matter quickly, Ms. Beckett."

"I'll bet he is," she says, then nods her head down the hall.

Almost as if commanded, Castle turns at her nod (he could get used to a woman as thoroughly in charge as her) and sees his daughter and his mother at the end of the hall.

Alexis.

"What's it going to take?" he says, turning back around to stare down Katherine Beckett. He puts his arousal on hold, the picture of his daughter's face as she walks through the halls enough to cool him for good. "How do I make this go away?"

"You can't buy your way out of responsibility, Mr. Castle." Her voice is like ice, but her eyes are glittering with disappointment. How has he disappointed *her* too? He knows his daughter, but-

"Sure I can. Tell me your price."

"I can't be bought-" she starts hotly, and the passion that flares in her is gorgeous. Erotic. Of course, his lawyer is already sputtering and trying to shut him up.

"No, no, not what he meant. At all. Let us know, Ms. Beckett, what the city requires from Mr. Castle to make amends for his behavior. There were extenuating circumstances-"

"There always is," she murmurs, voice rich with sarcasm, and still, he sees it in her. The ability to be more than she is, more than she lets on. Which is it?

"Let's talk this over before the arbitration meeting, find a common solution. Mr. Castle is trying to think about his daughter."

"He should have done that before he did something so reckless," Kate answers, and it's Kate this time, he can see it. Hot, passionate, and almost. . .grieving. Interesting.

His eyes flicker over her wardrobe, take it in for what it is rather than how it makes her look. Expensive suit. A thin chain around her neck, gold. No rings. A horrid watch. Ah. A man's watch? And thus the reaction to his lawyer's statement about his daughter. Kate is a woman who's been hurt by a man's reckless behavior, and it's hurt her, and she keeps it carefully in check, the watch a reminder of the way men can cause her pain and also a talisman against it.

A memento, perhaps?

But he can get at the details, no problem. Castle has no doubt in his ability to be both persuasive and stubborn.

And he needs a new story. Desperately.

* * *

><p>He won't leave her alone. She isn't sure how he got her phone number, her private and unlisted cell phone number, but of course everyone has a price.<p>

Not her. She doesn't.

"Please, Counselor. Give me a chance to make it right."

"You need to be held accountable for your actions." Why is she even talking to him? Especially late at night in her tshirt and jeans, with a law review journal in one hand and a highlighter in the other-

No. Wait. The highlighter's missing. Damn. Where-

Ah. In her hair, holding it in a bun. She takes it out and lets her hair fall over shoulders, scratches her hand through it, and she hears his sharp intake of breath.

"Castle?" she says, narrowing her eyes.

"Nuh - uh, nothing. Here. I'm here."

"You need to stop calling me."

"Let's have dinner."

"No." It doesn't even phase her, really; she gets propositions all the time from guys like him, guys accused of misdemeanors or felonies. Like stealing a police horse.

"Please? I need some help."

He. . .what?

"Kate-"

"It's Beckett," she says crisply, finding her words again.

"Counselor. I need some help. I have a deadline fast approaching and I've got nothing. Absolutely nothing. I can't sit in jail for 30 days. I need those days to write. I write best under pressure."

If it weren't Richard Castle, she wouldn't even be listening to this idiot. If it weren't her favorite author, and so much more than favorite, her salvation at times, she'd have hung up on him and sent a police presence to his building to remind him that this isn't ethical.

Okay, maybe not the police. Well. Maybe so.

"Community service, Beckett."

She is tempted. He has a book launch party (she reads the fan sites, yeah, damn it, she does), and she knows the spoilers all say he's killed a main character. Again.

"Did you really kill him?"

"Uh. No. Innocent until proven guilty, right? Wait, what?"

She groans and rubs her face. Her damn mouth. Shut up, Kate.

A chuckle. "Wait. You mean. The book. You mean the book. So you are a fan. . ."

"No."

"How big of a fan?"

"Castle-"

"Like, you had to have gotten that spoiler from the fan site. It's not lurking anywhere else. We've been really good at keeping this under wraps-"

"You *did* kill him!" she gasps, sitting up in her bed.

"Don't look so horrified."

Look so...what? "Are you. . .where are you, Castle?"

"And what am I wearing? Well, Counselor, if you must know-"

"No. Hush. Where are you right now? Can you see me?"

Silence and she jumps out of bed, heads straight for her lights, flicked them off. Heart pounding in the dark.

"That is so creepy, Castle."

"No, no. Not creepy. Just. I wanted to be sure you were home before I showed up."

"Showed up? No. No, you are not showing up. You are going home. What about your daughter?"

"She's studying; she's a good girl. She's fine. And no, I haven't had a drop to drink. That was a one-off. And those idiots aren't my friends. Let me in, Kate."

And then she hears the knock on her door, and her heart is in her throat, the highlighter in her hand like a weapon, but holy mother of-

"No," she hisses into the phone. "You cannot come in."

"I'll stay out here all night if that's what it takes."

"Castle. No."

"Community service and time served."

"That was one night!"

"The way you say that-"

"Richard Castle, do not even begin to make that dirty," she growls, pacing in her room, trying to ignore the door to the living room.

"Begin? We are way past that. I'm in your hallway, Katherine Beckett, leaning against your door. And I could start telling some more dirty, hot stories about you out here. About the time we-"

"We have done nothing. You're making it up."

"Yeah, but the nice old lady waving at me - hello, ma'am; yes, it's a very nice night - she doesn't know that."

Damn. No, no, no. This isn't good. Mrs. Molasky tells the guys at the corner store everything, just everything, and then her mahjong group at the Jewish community center, and that *will* get back to her mother, probably to the judge as well, whose own mother is in that same group-

"Castle. Leave," she hisses, desperation tinging her voice.

"Open the door, Kate."

Her heart pounds. She's not seriously heading towards her front door. No. Stop.

"I start with your legs. Run my hand up your thigh, slowly dragging my fingers along the so-soft skin, the firm-"

She opens the door.


	2. Chapter 2: Something Brand New

**That Familiar Feeling**

Chapter Two: Something Brand New

* * *

><p>And it may just be more of the same<br>But sometimes you wanna go where everyone knows your name  
>So I guess I'll have to wait and see<br>But I'm just gonna let something brand new happen to me

-Cee Lo Green, 'Bright Lights, Bigger City'

* * *

><p>"You are insufferable," she says, yanking him over the threshold with a withering stare. "I could get in serious trouble for this."<p>

"Funny, that's what your mother said as well."

Dread floods her gut. "My mother?"

It's only dread. It is *not* a stab of jealousy.

His grin turns feral and she has to take a step back. Too late, she realizes she still has her fingers wrapped around his forearm; she lets go, tries to give herself distance.

Castle turns and shuts her door, prolonging her misery. Her mother.

"I went to see my good friend, the mayor-"

"No," she moans and turns away from him, her hands to her face.

"And who meets me but the Mayor's Chief of Staff?"

Kate tries to take a deep breath, tries to recover. It's fine. Minimal damage done. She can still recover this. She could be disbarred for meeting him like this, disbarred, but only if she doesn't end it now.

"This is entirely inappropriate, Mr. Castle. I can't meet you without your lawyer-"

He shrugs. "I waive my rights. Simple. Done. And? Why does mentioning your mother bring us back to Mr. Castle? Interesting."

No. No, no, no. "My mother has nothing-"

"I knew I'd seen you before."

What? "No."

He can't possibly remember her from the book signings.

"At the Mayor's Ball last year. Right? Your mother organized that whole affair, didn't she? You *must* have been there."

She smiles, feels some of the control come back into her hands. "She did. I wasn't there."

He cocks his head. "Well, you and your mother look alike."

Something alarmingly warm glows in her chest, but she ruthlessly pushes that aside. "We-"

"Both driven. Successful. Gorgeous. You wear suits just like she does. Johanna Beckett. Former DA. Now Chief of Staff. She's gunning for the mayor's spot, isn't she? No. Wait. Don't answer that. I just want to watch it play out."

Just like that and the warmth is well and truly dead now. Kate lifts a finger, and an eyebrow, to shut him up. He closes his mouth and unfortunately, all she can think is _Good, he can be trained_.

No. She doesn't want to train him.

"Why were you at the mayor's? What does my mother have to do-"

"I was asking for a favor. A pretty big favor apparently. All this lawyer confidentiality stuff. The charges make it messy too. It's not like-"

"Spit it out, Castle."

"I signed some forms. I get to be with you."

"You do what?" She feels her cheeks flame and can't even stop it.

"Shadow you. Well, your mother said-"

"You talked to my *mother* about this?"

"She said I had to get your final permission, but she couldn't see why not. She did warn me that you'd never go for it, that you were by the book, and too independent, that you liked working alone, being alone. And here you are, on a Friday night-"

That beast flares in her chest, hissing, and she turns away from him, moving away, getting away. Her mother. . .

No.

"My mother said I get to decide? Fine. I'm deciding. No." Why did she open her door? She could be *disbarred* for this.

"Wait, wait, let me explain. You've already heard. I killed Derrick Storm."

She jerks to a stop. He did it then; he really did it. She stares at him, stunned. He's killed her hero. Everything else seems inconsequential.

"Why?" she whispers, horrified at how raw her voice is, how the grief opens up in her.

Castle's watching her; his whole body has gone still, as if he's listening to some voice she can't hear. A voice that tells him too much.

She closes her eyes, opens them quickly to keep him from seeing that crack in her demeanor. "Why did you do that?"

"I'm sorry," he says, like it's a reflex. A bewildered panic rises in his eyes. "Kate."

She presses her fist into her thigh and bites the inside of her cheek to keep in control.

"I didn't know-" he whispers back, strides forward as if he's going to touch her, *hold* her.

She backs away.

His hands drop; he sighs. His eyes search the room, then come to rest on her. She's still waiting for an answer. She needs Derrick Storm. No. No, she needs her father, only her father is dead and-

"What happened to him?" she chokes out.

He shakes his head. "You tell me first."

Kate stumbles back, disoriented by the certainty in Castle's voice.

"What happened to him?" he asks, and reaches out to her, takes her by the arm, brings her in too close. But his eyes drift down, his fingers circle the watch."Who was he? Brother? Boyfriend? Father?"

Her chest squeezes, her hand makes a fist. She wishes she was further along in her martial arts class, but her schedule is busy, and she keeps making excuses. She could use a judo move or two for just such a time as this. She could use some physical combat, some punching too. Something violent and sudden that would wipe her out.

"Your father," he says suddenly and his hand gentles around her wrist, cups the watch. "It must have been in the news. But I don't remember. . ."

She shivers and yanks her arm away from him, brings her hand to her chest, her fingers over the watch. "Cute trick. Now leave before you get me disbarred."

Something in him falls away; she can see it crumble. As if all of that was a facade, one mask after another, starting with the playboy and ending with the novelist, and now something truer and more hollow stares back at her from those eyes. Something she recognizes because she sees it in the mirror every morning.

"I killed my character because Derrick Storm doesn't cut it for me anymore. Nothing does. Nothing works, nothing seems right. I don't know - but _you_. I saw you this morning and everything was. . .interesting again. There are all these words. You have a story, and I have to tell it. I need to tell it. Please. I need you, Kate."

* * *

><p>They take separate cabs; she's being paranoid. He calls his lawyer and conference calls her as well, and they hammer out the fine details from different cabs going the same place. He figures that would be good enough to stop the 'you could get me disbarred' comments. Right?<p>

When he opens up the door for her, she hesitates just outside. Castle has to push her through and even now, she stands with her coat still on, her whole face wary.

Alexis paces in front of him, waiting up for him probably; he reaches out and grabs her by the wrist to slow her down.

"It's okay."

"Could they really put you in jail?"

"No."

Kate shifts in the doorway, frowning at him as he half-lies to his daughter's face. He's always promised himself he would tell her the truth, but this one time, he isn't going to do it. He hopes Kate Beckett knows how to keep her mouth shut too.

"Are you going to put him in jail?" Alexis asks, bending around her father to see Kate still standing in the entryway.

Castle turns his head and looks at her too. If Alexis's anxious face can't convince her to let him off the hook, then no amount of mystery-writer persuasion is going to do it.

Kate hedges, taking a deep breath; he can see the rise of her chest under that thin grey tshirt. In her dark wash jeans, her black boots, black pea coat unbuttoned, she looks more college co-ed than lawyer.

"No," she says finally, and he sees it all flash across her face. Most of all, disappointment in herself. He's already corrupting her, isn't he? It doesn't make him feel good. "No, I'm not going to put him in jail. He'll do community service."

He mouths _thank you_ over his daughter's head, and Alexis lifts her face up to his expectantly. "See?" he says, rubbing her shoulders. "It's fine."

She's only 15. He shouldn't have-

"Plus your dad is going to mandatory AA meetings," Kate says suddenly. "For 6 weeks."

"AA meetings?" he says, lifting his head, stunned. Did his lawyer agree to that? He was in on that conference call; she didn't mention it before.

She looks resolute standing in his foyer, even in the jeans. "It'll be good for you, Castle."

"Counselor. I have. . .a reputation to protect-"

"I've heard of your reputation, Castle. This sounds exactly like what your reputation would suggest."

Alexis grins up at him, that relief in her eyes making him weak. "Bad Boy of Bestsellers going to AA meetings? Dad. . .if the press *does* hear of it, they'll eat it up. Paula said any press is good press."

He sighs and drops his arms from her shoulders, instead pulled her in for a hug. "So long as you know the truth, pumpkin."

"I know. You were. . .with friends."

"Social drinking is still-" Kate starts and Castle lifts his head and glares at her, fiercely, everything behind that look. _Shut the hell up._ She does.

"They're not my friends, Alexis. And they're gone. So don't worry."

"What about Mom - uh - Meredith?"

He sighs. He doesn't love that Alexis has stopped calling her mom. But. "She's in LA again. Probably to stay."

Alexis goes weak against him. "Good. That's good. Please Dad, next time she comes into town, don't go out with her. _I'd_ rather go out with her than have you fall on your sword and keep her occupied for me."

While it's true that he did it so that Alexis could study this weekend, he honestly thought seeing Meredith would help. Thought that at least being with his first ex-wife would be better than feeling absolutely nothing after getting himself a second ex-wife. Problem is, they just went at it like rabbits and drank with her friends and done exactly the same stupid stuff he'd done with her before, and that was all a mistake back then too. Well, all of it except Alexis.

And Katherine Beckett is standing there listening to every word.

"Yeah. It was a bad idea. We'll figure out a way to keep it. . .minimal, you and her."

Alexis nods and steps back, still clinging to his hand though. She glances at Beckett and looks hesitantly back at her father. "What are you doing, Dad?" she asks, leaning in like she's trying to keep her voice down.

He grins over at Beckett and then laughs down at his daughter. "Not what you think. Beckett is going to let me shadow her at work for awhile. For a character."

Alexis's face lights up. "Really? That's awesome, Dad. Wow." His daughter releases him and turns to the lawyer with all that joy in her eyes. "Thanks, Ms. Beckett. I mean-"

"Call me Kate," she says and steps down into his apartment. Finally. Like she's decided to stay. She holds out her hand to Alexis.

His daughter shakes it, beaming. Yeah, he was smart bringing Beckett back here. He lured her in with promises of seeing his story board and needing some background details, but he knew it'd be his daughter that wooed her.

"Kate then. I'm Alexis. And thank you for giving him community service. Dad's really not the guy you think he is. He'll prove himself."

"Uh, thanks, Alexis?" he drawls, hooking an arm around her shoulders and pulling her back against his side.

"You know what I mean. Love you, Dad," she says, raising up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

He grins at her and watches her head for the stairs. "Hey, where you going?"

"It's late. I have the ACT in the morning."

"Oh right." Duh. The whole reason he went out with Meredith in the first place. "Okay. I'll make breakfast. What time do you need to be gone?"

"By seven at the latest. Test starts at eight."

"Can do," he says, then turns his head back to Kate Beckett.

She's looking after Alexis with such abject longing that it startles him.

Her_ father's_ watch. Has to be. Absolutely has to be. She wears it even now, even after he pointed it out so gracelessly, made her both protective of it and maybe a little ashamed; yet she still wears it. She has to. It reminds her of something, doesn't it?

"Beckett?" he says, using her last name to both nudge her out of that place in her head, and also to remind himself that this is a job. A character he needs. Research. "Ready to start?"

* * *

><p>She stares at his glowing screen behind his desk, her heart in her throat. He called up one of his older novels to show her the progression of his storyboard, how he builds everything in layers, piece by piece, starting with one or two details and then creating an entire person from that.<p>

She's going to get fired for this. There's no way that the DA's office isn't going to catch on to the convenient timing of everything. Arbitration is Monday, but here it is Friday night, and she's in jeans and a tshirt standing in his study, trying to pretend he isn't watching her.

Studying her.

She feels the urge to say something juvenile and stick out her tongue, but she stands still and traces the lines of his story to the conclusion she already knows. She's read that book three times. She wants and doesn't want to see the one for his last Derrick Storm novel. No. She doesn't.

"I'll get you an advanced copy of Storm Fall."

She turns to him, half-afraid he really can read everything on her face, and wonders why he would-

Oh.

"And you want my story in return," she says, getting it suddenly. He's caught the scent of a story, and he's bribing her.

He's _bribing_ her. She's a city employee, a lawyer, and what she's doing is highly unethical.

"No-"

"I have to leave," she whispers and shakes her head, pressing the heels of her palms into her eye sockets. This is not like her. She isn't going to throw away everything she's worked so hard to build, the careful and painstaking defense against grief that her job is to her.

"Beckett-"

"Monday. Monday is arbitration. We'll settle everything then, and after that-" She leaves it hanging, her throat closing up, wanting so badly to-

No.

"What about. . .what about following you?"

"After Monday. Mr. Castle, I could be disbarred for this. I *have* to go." She backs away from him, turns for the open door of his study as if fleeing for her life.

She *is* fleeing for her life. She might have already ruined everything.

She's an idiot. A self-sabotaging idiot. One mention of her mother and she throws out all common sense, walks on the wild side, takes stupid risks, tries to prove something. So what if he's seen her mother about her? So what if he's called her mother gorgeous? Her mother *is* gorgeous. Her mother is the light of every room. Her mother is everything Kate never will be anymore: happy, ambitious, free.

"Kate - please -"

"Monday," she calls over her shoulder, and already has her phone out, dialing her therapist.

* * *

><p>After an hour-long conversation by phone in the back seat of a cab and on the walk up the stairs and finally with her head in hands in her own room, she's somewhat pieced back together.<p>

She misses her father desperately. On nights like this when she panics and does something stupid, when she sees the whole world through a glass and herself standing on the wrong side of it, it was her father who stood beside her, the same - reserved, quiet, a little damaged, understanding.

Her father knew her, inside and out. Her mother. . .

Her beautiful mother. Johanna Beckett captures all the air and light in the world and lets it beam out of her, at her fingertips, with a strength and beguiling innocence that make them all follow in her wake.

Except Kate. It used to be that Kate and her father sat on the sidelines together and marveled over Johanna's drive, her ambition, her intelligence, her fierce and unwavering joy in the face of the world's pain.

Kate watched as a little girl, knowing that this was who she was meant to be, who she wanted to be, who she longed to be. As beautiful, as independent, as strong as her mother.

Only she isn't. She's her father's daughter, and now he's gone, and left her sitting alone, waiting for her life to start looking like it ought to.

It always works like that. The grief therapist she still sees every once in a while helped her understand the way her head works, the way the relationships in her family work. She's her mother's cheerleader, and she knows it, loves it, cherishes that role. Just as her father did when he was alive. But her father was *Kate's* cheerleader as well. With his death, Kate has no cheerleader left, no one to look at her and marvel at her, no one to celebrate her successes, no one who calls her princess.

Her mother tried. Of course she did; she's her mother. But Johanna has the charm and the ease to pass through any obstacle as if it never touched her. Kate, on the other hand, is left battered by it, unkempt and ragged, unable to function.

And whenever she turns and sees her mother there, beautiful and serene, she does stupid things. She buys a motorcycle and drives without a helmet, too fast; she sneaks out to meet her boyfriend and does things she never intended to do; she follows Richard Castle home and lets him seduce her with words.

She's low man on the pecking order at the DA's office for a reason; they can't trust her not to ruin the case by doing some unorthodox stunt. Acting out. That's what the therapist calls it, as if she were five years old and pitching a fit for attention.

She takes her therapist's advice and calls her mother.

"Katie. Hey, sweetheart. You know I'm working really late tonight on this deal. . ."

"It's eleven o'clock-" Kate squeezes her eyes shut and blows out a long breath. "Sorry. You're busy. Do you have ten minutes?"

"I can try," her mother laughs, the sound at once both familiar and overwhelmingly too much. "Shoot."

Kate closes her eyes and tries to straighten out her head, hear her mother's words as she intends them and not as Kate's grief wants to hear them.

She braces herself. "Richard Castle came to see me."

"Oh, sweetie, I told him to wait until after the arbitration-"

"He must have ignored that." _But why didn't you warn me?_ Kate presses a hand into her chest and stills that childish thought. "I agreed to community service."

"No one will take fault with that. You make deals like that all the time, sweetie-"

It doesn't help that the sentences her mother oozes from the phone are exactly the same ones she's told herself. They are too much alike, and not alike at all.

"I don't think I can do this, Mom."

Her mother pauses on the other end, a breath indrawn. "By. . .this. . .what do you mean?"

Kate droops, sighing, then stands up to pace her room. "I don't know." But she does. She knows. Being the focus of his attention. Richard Castle. She talks a good game, but when it comes down to it, she's her father's daughter. She doesn't *want* the spotlight, or the ambition; she wants to do her job, right one wrong at a time, and get people justice for the terrible things done to them.

She can't light up a room, but she doesn't want to either. She wants to stay here in the darkness where her father's memory is most vivid, most sharp, most cutting.

"Okay, well, is this really about Richard Castle wanting to follow you around?"

"Why did you tell him-"

"Katie. I told him that it was up to you, sweetheart. And it is. You don't have to. I just thought. . .I thought it might be a thrill for you. For a change. Fun."

For a change. Kate scrubs her hand over her face. "Fun for me."

"You love his books. And now you have the chance to *be* in one of his books. I thought you'd be pleased, actually. Isn't it very flattering? I hoped it would. . .put you back on track a little."

"You mean I'm not on track now?"

"Kate," her mother says softly. "Your father wouldn't want you to waste your life being miserable-"

Just because her mother's grief is classy and sophisticated while Kate's is a dark pit that threatens to swallow her, doesn't mean she's wasting her life.

"I need to do this, Mom. I need to help somehow, to make things right."

"You can't make this right," her mother says, her voice cracking with frustration. "There's nothing to be made right. Someone made a terrible choice and your father was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Just in the wrong place?" she hisses, her heart pounding. "The wrong place? Daddy died. He was shot to death. In a fucking convenience store. I watched the surveillance tape. He played the hero and he died. That isn't just being in the wrong place. Dad stood up to him, and he paid with his life."

And then, of course, as always, Kate hears the ragged breathing on the other end of the line that is her mother crying, those cathartic tears that always make her mother feel better but Kate worse.

Because it's her fault. Most of the time. She can't be the effortless socialite, the practiced politician. She's a daughter who lost her father and can't find a way out of needing him. A little girl who was told she was a princess, but woke one morning to discover the king had died and the kingdom had disowned her.

But this is her mother, the one who held her as she cried and brushed her hair back from her face, the two of them curled up on the couch after the funeral. This is the mother who made pancakes on that following Sunday morning and stretched out with her in the big, empty bed to watch cartoons, making her laugh again, helping her find moments of light.

"I'm sorry-" Kate chokes. "I'm sorry. Mom?"

"I'm here," the voice answers, shaking a little, somewhat less in control but making a valiant effort.

"Where are you, Mom? Let me come meet you."

"I could use a break. The coffee shop around the corner from the office-?"

"Yeah. Be there in twenty."

"Love you, Katie."

"I love you too, Mom."

Before going in, Kate takes a moment to watch from outside, standing in the chill of the late fall air, her coat tight around her frame. Her mother is ordering, smiling at the man behind the counter, having a conversation that seems to pull in the solitary customer at the next table, the two of them drawn into the warm, effervescent world of Johanna Beckett.

All it would take for Kate to be part of that world is to open the door and step inside. And still she waits, prolonging the moment, the girl on the outside of the glass.

If her father were here, he'd nudge her arm and smile warmly at her, tell her to get in there. He'd be right behind her, and they'd sit together at the table and listen, carried aloft by her mother's charm and grace and personality, carried together in the joy of it.

But her father isn't here. And the sidewalk is cold, and lonely, and Kate wants to reach for the door, but she wants darkness and solitude more. Solitude rather than loneliness, but it seems her stupid heart can't distinguish the two any longer.

Kate makes a fist, her father's nudging at her shoulder almost a palpable thing, and reaches for the door. She's certain though, that she'll ruin her mother's happy world the moment she steps inside, like bursting a bubble.

Once inside, her mother opens her arms and hugs Kate tightly, intensely, a forgiveness and an apology wrapped in one. With the rich aroma of coffee in the air and her mother's arms around her, Kate slowly feels the broken edges getting filed down again.

"Mom-"

"If you don't want him around, Katie, you don't have to. I just want you to think about it."

"I have thought." Kate slumps down into a cafe chair and puts her elbows on the table.

Her mother brushes a hand behind an ear and sits down across from her. She crosses her legs, puts her coffee on the table. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

Her mother's dark eyes regard her, tender, pleading. "He'd be good for you, Katie. His books always make you laugh. He made me laugh when I saw him today."

"He said he'd seen you," she gets out, making a fist under the table. She sips the coffee her mother ordered for her and tries to calm her stupid, jealous heart.

"Oh," her mother says softly. "Is that what this is about?"

Kate blinks. "No."

"Just because he came to see me? Don't sabotage yourself, Katie."

Damn, she hated what came out in family therapy. She never should have admitted to that. She sighs and sinks her head onto her arms, wonders again for the thousandth time how her mother can know her so well, be in her head like that, and still be so untouchable.

Her mom lays a hand over her head, smoothes her hair in support. "Did you call the therapist?"

"I did," Kate groans into her arms, then lifts her head to deal with it. This. "I called him. I talked for an hour. I'm better now."

"Katie," her mother says softly, and the softness is what clues Kate in. "Your grief isn't wrong, sweetheart. It's just not healthy."

Kate rubs the tears off her cheeks and sighs again, swipes a thumb under her eyes to make sure she got the mascara that might have bled and run. "I'm trying."

Her mother's face is careful and expressive at the same time, like she has things she longs to say but won't. "Kate. You need to laugh. You need to have fun again. Daddy wouldn't want you to hurt so very much."

But she does. And she can't turn it off. How is she supposed to explain to her mother that half of her misery is sitting in front of her? That her grief oscillates between being so very sad her father is gone and being so very desperate for someone who will look at her again, look at her like her father did, like *she* was the world, and not just a supporting role in her mother's play.

"Show up to work on Monday, Katie, and tell him yes. Sometime in the future, maybe not too far from now, you'll thank me for it."

For what? Forcing her, once again, to pretend that everything in their world is light and joy and carefree fun? It isn't. It can't be. Her father is dead. Senseless and violent and tragic.

Her mother smiles, a real smile, not like the ones Kate has to fake, and it works, as it always does. It makes Kate's chest ease, her throat loosen. Her mother smiles wider, and like it always does, the pain eases. "And on that day, I won't even say I told you so."

With that, Kate's heart breaks open, flooded with her father's thousand laughing eyes, her father's hundreds of stolen moments, a litany of her father's soft-spoken understanding that always came, always came, the second her mother laughed out _I told you so_. It was her and her father's little joke, their little understanding.

She cries, and her mother moves around the table to sit beside her, very close, and she finds herself wrapped in arms that have always been strong, always been ready to carry her.

And Kate, even though she hates it, lets herself be carried.

Just this once more.


	3. Chapter 3: You Just Might

**That Familiar Feeling**

Chapter Three: You Just Might

* * *

><p>You can't say what you won't do<br>'Cause you know that you just might.  
>I'm alive this evening;<br>It was love at first sight.

-Cee Lo Green, "Bright Lights, Bigger City"

* * *

><p>Rick Castle can't stop staring at her, watching her, studying her. Every movement, every tightly controlled flicker of her face, every line of her body. She gives no hint of their (apparently) illegal meeting Friday night, but every nerve in his body is attuned to the way she's receptive of him. She says nothing and she says everything at the same time.<p>

He knows that she knows, she remembers, she wants-

The arbitration meeting is fast and painless. She sent over a quick draft to his lawyer sometime over the weekend, and Castle didn't even read it, simply made his lawyer check it and agreed to it sight unseen.

Stupid, but he trusts her. And he wants her.

What does she want?

Katherine Beckett is a finely-wrapped, highly-motivated, kick-ass lawyer who controls every person's attention in the room. Clerks to lawyers, assistants to secretaries, they look to Beckett for direction. She seems unaware of having this power, but she also wields it well. As if she assumes things will get done as she intends them.

A paradox. To not know you control a room, but act like you do anyway. And she does. She doesn't joke, but there are moments when a dry humor rears its head. And that calls to him as well. She has the men sucked into her dark eyes and long legs and smart mouth. In fact, when she starts talking, all the outward beauty almost fades from the mind, leaving only the modulated tones of a woman who insists on being followed, to the letter.

He'll follow. He'll sit or stay or heel. Fetch. Beg probably too.

He wants her, but he wants everything in her, all of her, the core of her and the essence, the thing that makes her Katherine Beckett, the jumble of neurons and memories and personality and tragedies that get her up in the morning and take her home at night.

He'd like to be that, part of that - wake her in the morning, take her home at night.

And the delicious, shivery shock of that thought is enough to knock all other thoughts completely out of his head.

The moment the arbitrator dismisses them, things signed, papers shuffled, documents to be filed, he's at her side and trying to make himself loom as large in her world as she does in his.

"Counselor?"

"Mr. Castle."

"It's Rick." He waits a long beat, but she offers nothing in return. He smiles; he'd have it no other way. "Where to next, Beckett?"

"You say that like you're coming with me."

"I am," he agrees happily, sliding one step closer to her, subtle, slow, not risking big movements.

She's either his easily-startled prey, or she's a lounging panther ready to make *him* the prey. It's hard to tell with her. It's exciting in a way it shouldn't be, in a way that makes him evaluate his predilictions with a hesitance he's never had before.

But no. It's fine. Thrill of the chase and all that.

"You're not," she says firmly.

It takes every ounce of will power in him to ignore that, ignore the command in her voice, the way he wants to obey, and instead, he reaches down and picks up the strap of her laptop case, pulls it over his shoulder.

She reaches for it as he takes it, indignation on her face, but her knuckles brush his cheek as the strap goes over his head, and she lets go. Her eyes flicker from conifer green to stepping stone brown, a riot of forestry in their depths. He expects to find things hidden in the underbrush, cool streams, ancient paths, the startled but controlled leap of a wild deer.

"You're not," she says again, more firmly.

"You agreed. I agreed. Community service and AA meetings."

"Yes. And?" She raises an eyebrow, daring him to mention anything else in full view of the people trickling out of the conference room.

"And I. . ." He watches her for a moment. Saying _And I want you_ isn't going to work with her. She won't come back to his loft for some afternoon delight; she would never-

"There are still things to know," he says finally. "And stories to be told. I need your help."

He watches her shoulders ease fractionally, though her eyes never change. Hard and steeled against him.

"I've got a court appearance," she says finally.

"I'll go with you," he grins.

* * *

><p>Richard Castle carries her laptop while she slings her briefcase over her shoulder and heads for the door. If he has her computer, she can't leave without him, can't ditch him, can she?<p>

When he went to the mayor, his friend and longtime poker buddy, looking for a favor, he never expected to be confronted with Kate Beckett's mother. The elder Beckett is beautiful, of course, and elegant; she has the same ability to draw you in and keep you captive, but what he remembers of Johanna, the overall impression, is not of steel and command, but of persuasive enchantment.

Her mother entices, while Kate controls. The difference is more than subtle; it's the entirety of their personalities. And Rick finds himself enthralled with the woman of steel, rather than the woman of enchantment.

Kate promises mysteries, her mother only. . .amusement.

Strange. "So, your mother-"

She turns on him in the hallway, her eyes dark, twin flames. "This has nothing to do with my mother."

Well. That's interesting.

"My mother isn't. . .part of this. She does her job; I do mine. You want to write about my mother, then maybe you should-"

"I don't want to write about your mother. Just you," he counters, reaching out and touching the soft, fine edge of her ear. She's scraped her hair back into a severe knot at the back of her neck, and her left ear is calling to him.

For a moment, she stares at him, as if too stunned by his touch or by his audacity to move. And then she gathers herself and steps back, narrowing her eyes at him, lips flat and tight.

"Your skin is soft," he says, and realizes he meant it. And that words are coming out of his mouth before he can stop them. "You look like your mother, but you're nothing like her."

She goes very still, a quiet in her eyes that isn't peaceful but deadly. His heart races to see it; she spins back around marches off.

Castle stands in the hallway, abandoned and bewildered, until she calls out:

"You coming?"

* * *

><p>Throughout the next arraignment, Kate Beckett feels his eyes on her. The one - only one - time she allows herself to look his way, Castle is scribbling notes in a steno pad, the kind journalists and detectives use. Notes on her?<p>

The arraignment is easy, felony assault, but she has to coddle the abused wife, quietly prime her for the ordeal of a trial, remind her of all the beatings when she begins to hesitate, and then sit quietly beside her when it's over, silent as a stone, while the woman cries in grief-filled relief.

Castle, surprisingly, keeps his distance for the duration, remaining on the back row with press and family members, giving her perplexing looks when she does let herself glance at him. The woman hugs her, mumbles something about the women's shelter she's staying at, and Kate again reminds her to call if she needs anything.

She does often hate her job, but this part. . .she's a lawyer - a prosecutor - for this very reason. For the people like this woman, who need an advocate, a voice. . .

The judge is still hearing cases, of course, so Kate sits on the front row while the woman shuffles out. They're beginning the week's docket and Kate has one more case in this judge's courtroom before she can head back to her office, so she decides to just stay right here. Wait.

Make _him_ wait.

Is that what she's doing? Testing him?

She sighs and pulls a few files out of her briefcase. Yes. She's testing him. Trying to see how far he's willing to go. He's a playboy millionaire - despite being her favorite author - and she's pretty certain he'll grow bored with her, day in and day out.

She opens her laptop, calls up the notes for her next case, and starts to work.

At the next break in the docket, when the bailiff's handing over the file to the judge, Kate feels her stuff being shoved from the bench, a body landing next to hers. She glances up from the laptop in surprise, a little indignation, but sees it was only Castle.

He has her briefcase in his lap, his hands filled with his own notes hastily scrawled across the lined notebook.

"Beckett-"

"Hush," she murmurs, inclining her head to the judge. "Don't you dare get me kicked out."

Castle shuts his mouth, frustration in his eyes. She goes back to her laptop, her work, organizing the evidence presentation. Lawyer for the defense is presenting a motion today, and most likely that's all that the judge will hear, but she wants to be prepared for the unlikely outcome that the judge rules in the defendant's favor. For any case, she likes to have divergent timelines: a chain of presentations that can be used should one outcome or another happen.

So that, if the alternate reality were to occur, she'll know exactly what to do.

Beside her, she thinks Castle is still taking notes until she hears the rip of paper from the spiral notebook. The bailiff glances her way; she holds her breath, but the judge says nothing.

And then Castle passes her a note.

She is a lawyer; she's used to notes being passed during a trial or a hearing in a courtroom. But there's something about getting a note from Rick Castle that makes her feel like she's sitting in her fifth-grade classroom, her heart in her throat as she slides the note from the cutest boy in the school into her hand.

But she's not ten years old, and he's not the cutest boy-

Well.

Kate grits her teeth and unfolds the notebook page, smoothing her fingers over the fold lines to make it lay flat.

_What's next, Counselor?_

She takes a shallow breath, her fingers flexing for a pen to answer. She turns to look for one, but he's already tapping her palm with his own pen, and her hand unfurls as if in response, reflex, opening to the blue instrument he offers.

She closes her fingers around it and an illogical, ridiculous thrill floods through her. She's. . .using his pen.

_I have a motion in this courtroom at nine. May get to it early; this judge is known for being fast._

She allows herself the momentary indignity of acting like a fifth grader and folding the note precisely the same way he has, sliding both pen and paper to him, leaving it on top of his notebook in his lap. He's put her briefcase on the floor.

She can't help but watch him as he opens it, the careful fingers, the pen loose in one hand, the note grasped by his thumbs. Their two penmanships, his on top, hers longer and more elegant on bottom. His finger traces the time - nine - and then he's leaning into her, reaching over her body for her left hand, pulling her wrist towards himself.

He is checking the time. On her father's watch.

She feels the burn start in her cheeks and transfer instead to the back of her throat, wondering, for an instant, what her father would say about Kate picking up a shadow. About it being Richard freaking Castle.

Castle strokes his fingers up the inside of her forearm, bringing her shockingly back to the courtroom, the hard bench under her crossed legs, and the man sitting close and warm and large beside her.

She pulls her arm back, feeling only the edges of his fingertips on her skin as he releases her inch by inch. He takes the pen and puts a hand to the paper to hold it, then begins composing a reply.

He writes fast, his letters blocky but small, cramped. The way he writes, she wonders if he was left-handed as a child, forced to use his other hand. . .

The note is given back to her, pressed into her lap instead of on the metal of the laptop, his finger touching the waistband of her skirt. Her muscles flinch, and she knows he felt it, can see the crinkle in his eye when she looks.

She takes the note, opens it quickly.

_I know a great place for lunch._

Lunch? She huffs at him, shooting him a look, and snatches the pen from his fingers, scribbling back.

_It's entirely too early to think of lunch._

This time he answers and has it back in her lap before she's even gotten a chance to settle at the keyboard. She closes her laptop and slides it away in the case, then opens the note again.

_Writer's bar. Good beer. Okay fries. Decent hamburgers._

Her stomach cramps again, only this time not because of his touch.

_You're making me hungry. Stop._

She can see his grin as he reads it. He moves to take the pen from her hand, but she has a sudden thought and instead reaches across him for the note, plucks it from his fingers and adds another line.

_I know a better place. Cop bar. Great fries. Better burgers. Good beer. And strawberry milkshakes._

His grin is wide, his eyes practically twinkle, and when she hands him the note, she knows he's already read it by the way his fingers trap hers against his thigh, hold her there with that delighted, overgrown-kid smile. He eases the pen from her fingers, flips her hand over and writes on her palm.

_It's a date._

* * *

><p>"Oh-ho, it's Katherine Beckett!"<p>

Castle watches the lawyer saunter through the bar, shoving on a man's shoulder, knocking an elbow with another one, a detective looking her up and down, the bartender with an easy grin for her. Remy's is a mixture of bar and grill, smells like burgers and fries, and a couple of televisions are playing the basketball game from last night.

The man who called her out stands at the back of the bar, watching Kate Beckett with hungry eyes. It makes Castle hustle forward to stand at her side, close. The man eyes Castle with a narrow and focused look.

Definitely a cop.

"Beckett. Who's the tag-along?"

For some reason, the lawyer shifts a tad bit closer to him. Didn't she? It might be in his head. But she doesn't glance back at him.

"This is Richard Castle. The author," she says. As if showing him off. Bragging?

Rick glances over at her from the corner of his eye. Kate looks both defensive and brittle; there has to be a story here.

He holds out his hand. "Call me Rick."

The Clint Eastwood-type gives a nod, then takes his hand. "Mike. Mike Royce. Retired cop."

"Thought you were heading out to LA, Royce."

"Just got back," he drawls. Castle tilts his head and notices the way the man leans towards her. "Got a bounty in Brooklyn."

"So the bar-" Kate starts, but Royces waves her off and turns back to his drink. Kate huffs and grabs Castle's arm, pushes him towards a booth.

Too late. Rick has already seen it. Her issues with his drunken behavior and the police horse weren't just about his arrest; the inclusion of AA meetings has to be a reaction to this man, Mike Royce.

This retired cop, now bounty hunter, who must be (or must have been at one time) important to Katherine Beckett.

Royce snags Castle's jacket as he passes, pulled between the two of them.

"Why you sniffing around Kate?" he growls under his breath.

Beckett glances back at him with a frown; Royce nods for her to go on without Castle. Surprisingly, she does, as if she can't directly go against Royce's wishes. Rick can't help watching her walk away, the long lines of her legs disappearing under her skirt.

"Uh-huh. Like that."

He turns back to Royce with a blank look, but he knows he's not putting anything over the bounty hunter.

"Purely professional interest," he says. "Story idea. I wrote a few pages this weekend and my publisher wants to see a manuscript."

"You're gonna write a book about her."

"Not about her. Just. . .a character based on her."

Royce glances past Rick towards where Kate must be sitting, waiting. "You hurt her, you answer to me."

Rick studies the man before him - past his prime though still physically fit, perhaps something of an alcoholic, baleful and suspicious. Royce is older than Rick, but he won't rule out some kind of romantic interest there. "Answer to you?"

"Just watch it."

Like a father, then.

"I have a daughter. If I expect her to be treated with respect, I've got to treat other women with respect, don't I?"

Royce puts his hands on his hips. "That might do."

Castle glances back to the man's nearly empty glass, then brushes past him, heading towards Beckett.

Royce doesn't try to stop him.

* * *

><p>When Castle makes it back to her, she's already spread out along one side of the booth, her phone on the table, her briefcase and laptop bag beside her. He takes the other bench and glances around, giving her a moment because he can tell by the stiffness in her posture that she's been thrown off her game.<p>

By Royce.

He doesn't like the dark jealousy that rises in him at that, and he tries to control the urge to mark her, somehow, to claim her as his alone. His new character, his discovery, his. . .muse.

His muse. Exactly.

And the part of him not wrestling with his jealousy is avidly curious about Royce. How they met, where, did they ever. . .

No, they didn't. He could read that in Royce clearly enough. But in Beckett, there's something in her regard for Royce that he can't pinpoint. A need or a longing he doesn't like to see, but it's coupled with the tangled up pieces of her story. The story she has yet to give him.

"Beckett."

She glances at him, her eyes flicker to his lips, then back. His body runs hot like she's flipped a switch in him, and he pushes back against the booth, swallowing hard. Does she know she does that? Did she just do that on purpose?

"I guess you want to know who that was," she says slowly.

_No, I want to leap over the table and kiss you. Do things to you._

"You could say that."

She nods and laces her fingers together on top of the table, opens her mouth-

Only to be stalled by the arrival of their waitress, who plops down coasters and napkins and asks them what they want. He hasn't even seen a menu, but he doesn't care; his need to know is so strong, he just wants this woman to go away.

Kate orders a milkshake and veggie burger with fries, so he asks for the same. Just to speed things up.

"Veggie burger, Castle?" she asks, lifting an eyebrow at him. The waitress has moved off into the crowded confusion of Remy's.

"Just getting things going. I didn't see a menu." He shrugs at her and puts his hand on the table too, mirroring her position.

She tilts her head and regards him, like she can't quite figure him out. Well, vice versa, and that makes two of them.

"So. Beckett. The guy who just warned me of a beatdown in my future should I break your heart? Wanna tell me about him?"

She laughs, a short bark that has her clapping her hand over her mouth and shaking her head. At him or Royce, he's not sure.

"He said that?"

"Not in so many words, but essentially."

"Well, he doesn't need to worry, because-"

"Because I'd never break your heart," he says smoothly, inserting it before she can say anything else.

Her mouth stays open on the words she didn't get to say, surprise flickering in her eyes. Why is she surprised? Surely he's made it quite clear how much he wants her?

Oh well, proclaiming you'd never break her heart is a little different than proclaiming you want her, isn't it?

He wonders how much of that he meant. Did he mean what he said? He thinks maybe he meant it.

She shakes her head and closes her mouth. "You asked for the story, and he's part of it. So."

He doesn't like that Royce is part of it. He doesn't like that the ex-cop bounty hunter has any kind of claim on her. He resists the urge to posture, to get back up and go find Royce and have it out in the alley (he'd lose, no doubt). He also resists the equally insistent urge to get his notebook out and take notes as she talks.

She dives right into it.

"When I was 22, about a week before graduation, my father was caught in a convenience store hold-up. The clerk behind the counter was being macho and trying to bully his way to his own gun, refusing to open the cash register. There were three customers in the store, including my father. A woman and her daughter. My dad. The clerk."

Rick swallows and watches her eyes drift to the window. He wonders what she sees.

"One desperate guy with a gun and a ski mask pulled over his face. He cocked the gun and was going to shoot, but my dad drew attention to himself. Shouted or said something. The surveillance tapes don't have audio."

Oh, seriously no. She watched the surveillance tapes? Castle stares at her. Well, of course she did. Katherine Beckett, hard-ass counselor for the DA would go over every piece of evidence, wouldn't she?

"The man turned and yelled at my father, Dad had his hands out, pleading for the clerk's life. The woman told the police that, in the store with her daughter. She said my father was trying to diffuse the situation, calm everyone down again. The clerk went for his shotgun when the guy was distracted and instead of calming things down, the guy pulled the trigger on my dad, then turned and shot the clerk. He shot at the register but couldn't get it open; he ran out with some lottery tickets and a handful of merchandise. He took maybe. . .fifty dollars worth. And my father's life."

Rick finds that he's not breathing, has to suck in air at the end of her story. He reaches across the table and snags her hands, squeezing, not able to say anything. She's still looking out the window as if seeing the scene against the glass. And maybe she is.

Her head turns slowly back to the bar, travels around to where Royce is probably sitting, just out of sight. She sighs.

"Mike Royce was the uniform sent to our house to break the news. He knew my mother from her work as a defense attorney. So he got the short straw."

Rick holds to her hands tighter, not sure if it's for her or for him, feeling an odd sense of doom welling in him, as if the story is far from over, as if she hasn't even reached the worst part yet.

"He held her while my mother sobbed. I don't think he meant to, but her grief is something. . .beautiful and freeing. I stood like a stone and haven't. . .moved since."

He realizes that he's laced their fingers together somewhere along the way; she hasn't noticed. Until now, apparently, because she lifts her fingers and tries to break away from him. He clutches tighter.

"Did they get the guy?" he asks, and somehow he knows the answer.

She shakes her head. "Despite a hefty reward. Royce kept the case open for a long time. He reopened it for me when he made detective. And I bullied another homicide guy into opening it again a few years ago. Still-"

He nods. "When did your mother stop being a defense attorney?"

"Immediately after. She switched sides so fast that heads spun." Kate gives a sharp laugh and stops trying to disengage her fingers from his. It makes him feel better for some reason. "She became the DA rather quickly after that. Then this job with the mayor last year."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

He sighs and wishes the table wasn't between them. "You're the one that I care about in all this. What about you?"

He sees it strike her, his words like a blow for a reason he can't understand. "Well. Here I am."

"Letting a novelist follow you around," he teases softly, trying to smile at her. He's afraid his horror and concern are too intermingled to tease apart. "Being a smart, sexy, kick-ass counselor for the DA. Take no prisoners. And alluring as hell."

She lifts a shoulder, but whatever compliments he managed to get into that sentence don't reach her.

"And Royce?" he says, needing to know.

She glances up at him, a shuttering in her eyes, a pulling away from him even as her hands stay in his. "I destroyed his life, Castle. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

She jerks her hands back and pushes out of the booth. He half-stands to go after her but she stops him with a touch on his shoulder. "Bathroom. There are some places you can't follow, Rick Castle."

She leaves and her absence is a warning.

One he doesn't intend to heed.


	4. Chapter 4: Yes I Need It

**That Familiar Feeling**

Chapter Four: Yes I Need It

* * *

><p>Yes I need it<br>Everybody does

'Bright Lights, Bigger City' CeeLo Green

* * *

><p>She follows him down the stairs into the Old Haunt, skeptical of the place. He's like a nine year old on a sugar rush, bouncing from photo to photo, showing off, showing her off, tapping the bar with a loving hand, stroking the brass fittings, taking stock.<p>

Honestly, it's seen better days.

They've met up for drinks or lunch or dinner at Remy's so many times now that he insisted on returning the favor. Actually, what he said was, "You showed me yours; I'll show you mine."

She cracks a smile, but twists away so he can't see, pretending to check out the flair on the walls. After a moment, she realizes that the writers of New York are plastered all over the place. Famous writers. Legends. She steps in closer to the booth Rick seems to be skulking around, notices the photograph almost immediately.

Same cocky pose. Oh, he set up right here on purpose, didn't he? She grins. "Look how cute you were, Castle."

"Were?"

She turns her head, eyes him critically, as if judging and finding him lacking. "I think you're wearing the same shirt."

He glances to the photo, down to himself, pulling the shirt away from his chest. He's filled out since his younger, leaner, meaner days; and even though she likes this confident and smooth Castle, she can't help wondering what the hungry, man-boy in the photograph was like.

"Not fair," he pouts. "It's not the same shirt. It just *looks* like it."

Okay, well, there he is. No need to wonder.

She pushes on him to make him move, sits down in the dark booth under his photo, claiming her spot. Castle immediately drops across from her, reaching under the table to grab her legs, hoist them onto the seat beside him.

Okay, yes, after four weeks of being together like this, she kinda has a routine. And Castle apparently knows her well enough to anticipate that routine. She likes propping her feet up and leaning back, her long legs stretched out. And every time, he leaves a hand on her ankles, rubs his thumb across her skin. It is, though, the first time he's been the one to pull her feet up.

She's wearing dress pants today, because pants don't require hose in court. Because when his fingers hit her ankle, he pushes away the material and touches bare skin, rubs his fingers into the lines made from her sock, firm and soothing. And she likes that.

Help her, she *likes* it. Him. It.

Him.

He pulls his notebook out with his free hand and flips it open, drags the pen from the spiral with his teeth. They've been like this enough times for her to know that he's not trying to show off here; he's just trying to keep his hand on her ankle and still get to his pen. Still, it looks damn sexy between his teeth.

Jeez, what is wrong with her tonight?

After four weeks of meetings like this, but a week being without him every day, she misses the touches, the looks, the notes passed, the coffee he runs and gets for her during a break, the eager questions he tries to ask during her mad dashes to the next arraignment, the way he pouts outside the door of the closed court proceedings, the hand that brushes her back when he walks beside her.

A week without him following her around and she wants him. Back! She wants him back.

Insane. She's certifiable.

"How'd it go?" she asks, watching him scribble the date and a couple of sentences he must have thought up while they were headed into the bar.

"Eh," he mutters, a little distracted by his own words on the page.

She bites her lip and keeps her back against the booth, knowing that if she leans forward like she wants to, if she looks eager and attentive and. . .and fangirly, he'll notice it in a second, raise his eyes to hers, smile that wicked, sexy smile, and offer her an up close and personal perusal of his pen.

She's heard it twice already. Or some similar, filthy line. Amusing line, if she's being honest. She can't stand it when he propositions her, like she's nothing more than another notch on his belt (even if the proposition makes her heart clench and lips quirks). So she doesn't lean forward.

Doesn't mean she doesn't want to.

Kate waits until he's finished jotting down scraps of dialogue (she can see the quotation marks), then tries again. "How'd the meeting with the editors go?"

He jerks his head up, gives her an apologetic grin. "Had to get that down. Yeah. Good. Pretty good. Uh, actually. . ."

"What?" she asks, a little breathless. If the editors didn't like the first three chapters, they won't recommend it to Black Pawn for publishing. If he doesn't get a contract for the book, then he has no excuse to keep meeting with her. To follow her. And she loses her excuse as well.

She swallows hard.

"Actually, they suggested a three-book deal." He grins widely at her, his cheeks shadowed with stubble from the long nights he's been pulling.

Kate knows this because he's been calling her late at night, when she's still up working on a court case, pacing her living room as she memorizes facts and phrases to use. He calls her; they talk. It calms her down so she can sleep. Sometimes she crawls into bed with his voice in her ear.

"Three book deal, Beckett," he says again, lifting his eyebrows. "They think the character has a lot going on."

It's frightening how much she relies on him.

"Three books?" she echoes numbly.

His face falls. "I thought you'd be flattered."

She is, but like hell she's going to admit to that now. "Flattered? Of course you thought that. What if I don't want you tagging along for. . .for three *years*?"

"Who says I need to follow you for three years? I have all I need right now," he shoots back, lifting his hand from her ankle and crossing his arms over his chest.

Her heart squeezes. Sabotage. Again. Why does she always do this to herself?

"If you have all you need, then what am I doing here?"

"I thought you were here because you wanted to be here. Because you wanted to see me."

"Wow, you are cocky."

"You're telling me I'm wrong?"

"What do you think?" she hisses, crossing her arms as well.

He rubs his hand over his jaw. "I think I should've realized it from the beginning. You only said yes to me because you were trying to prove something to your mother. Right? She pushed your buttons, so you took me on to spite her. Fine. I'll be a big boy and bow out. Nice being used by you, Kate."

Rick pushes up from the booth, but her legs are trapping him, and she's too stunned to move them, to know what to do. She can only stare at him, at the very real *hurt* in his eyes.

She hurt him.

"Wait," she says, sitting up, dropping her feet, giving him the chance to walk away because that's only fair, even though she doesn't want him to, doesn't know how the fight even got this far.

He should walk away. She's a broken thing; she doesn't even know what she's doing with him.

He stops, looks at her, but she turns her head, tries to think beyond herself for once. He has a daughter. He has a mother. People who rely on him. She. . .she has the tendency to make men do irrevocable things, dangerous things, because of her. And she doesn't stop them; instead, she asks them to do more. She takes everything they can give.

"What am I waiting for, Kate?"

She presses her lips together, stares at the photo of the younger, hungrier Richard Castle. The man who came to this bar and wrote his first novel on only a hope, a desire.

"What am I waiting for, Kate?"

She turns her head, stares at the older, wiser Richard Castle. The one with two failed marriages, a kid half her age, but the same hope in his eyes. Same hunger. Same desire. Only not for publication.

For her.

"I don't know," she says finally, unable to face it.

He puts his hands flat on the table, lowers his head. She closes her eyes, doesn't want to have to see him walk away.

He should walk away.

She feels the thud of his body falling back into the booth, his hands at the back of her calves, yanking her feet up on the bench again. Kate opens her eyes, her hands on the seat to keep her balance. She feels unsteady.

"I don't either," he says, shrugging at her. "But here I am."

Waiting.

* * *

><p>He walks her home because he can't stand to let her go. Anywhere without him anymore. Can't stand to watch her walk away.<p>

He wants to hold her hand in the worst way. Which scares him, honestly, and was the main reason he told her he had meetings with the editors all week and couldn't follow her around. He could have, really. Those meetings never take as long as the editors threaten they will, and Rick works fast on a deadline. He was out of there by eleven, every day.

No, he just. . .needed some space to think about this.

And he wrote. All about her. His character. Her?

He wants her. Of course he does. Only he has a feeling that if he had her, he'd never be able to let her go. He can't let her go *now* and he hasn't even held her hand. He so badly wants to hold her hand, brush lips across her cheek, touch the soft place behind her ear.

He's never longed to hold a woman's hand. At least, not since he was nine years old and new to all this. But with Katherine Beckett, he wants to hold her hand, lace their fingers together, see how that goes for awhile, see what it does to her, what happens in her eyes.

When he first saw her, he knew she was different. Strong. Mysterious. Alluring.

He knew she would mess him up inside, get him so worked up he couldn't function without her. Half the attraction. He's always been attracted to the dangerous ones. Meredith, so sexy and wild and untamed, but also careless and frivilous and thoughtless with everyone else's feelings but her own. Selfish, when it came down to it. Even with her own daughter. And Gina, a succubus, perched on his chest every night, draining the life out of him, shrieking at him in the daylight.

Rick should be kinder about Gina, but his most recent failed attempt at marriage still weighs bitterly. Meredith wasn't his fault; she reminded him of his mother. Gina, he should've known better; his mother introduced them.

Why is he thinking about his ex-wives (and his mother) when Katherine Beckett is walking so close to his side he can smell her hair? Her skin? One of the two. Something exotic and spicy and blooming. . .

"You smell like cherries," he blurts out. "Cherry blossoms."

Ah, smooth move, Castle. Way to make her fall for you.

She glances at him, an eyebrow quirked, shakes her head. For an instant, he suspects she's about to shove him away, tell him to go on home, get a cab, she can take it from here.

Instead, she slips her arm through his. Even through his coat, he can feel her thin bones against his ribs. He presses that arm against his side, steps closer to her. He brings his other hand out of his pocket and wraps it around hers on his arm, squeezing her fingers.

Closest he's gotten to holding her hand in weeks.

Pathetically, he's so happy with this, he'll probably fall asleep tonight with a smile on his lips and the hope that he's actually gotten somewhere with her.

Right. Keep dreaming, Rick.

"You smell like beer and old wood and french fries," she says suddenly, nudging him with her arm. "I don't know how in the world you can smell cherries over all that."

Means he's right, right? Cherries. "Is it shampoo or lotion or-"

"That's for me to know," she says coyly. CoyKate! Coy is a gorgeous, sexy-hot look on her.

He whistles and grins at her wolfishly, and immediately, she shuts it off, turns her head away. As if she can't bear to be the focus of his attention. Attention? Try full-throttle lust. Time to dial it down, Rick.

"Well then, I hope I find out," he says softly, hoping more that he hasn't ruined things.

She says nothing, tries to slip her arm out but he holds on to her hand, clinging in such an ungentlemanly manner, such a desperate manner, that he feels ashamed of himself.

But he doesn't let go.

She huffs at him, glances over, her eyes dark and dangerous. "Castle."

He returns his eyes to the sidewalk, to the people jostling them, steering her around stopped tourists looking at a map, avoiding the grates above the sewer system, his fingers around hers, still holding on. Ignoring the warning in her voice.

She relaxes, sighs, and he can drop his guard a little, ease them back to the conversation he wants to have with her.

"Are you okay with me doing three books?"

Kate startles, and he wonders what she was thinking about.

"Three."

"That's what the contract is for. I haven't signed anything yet, but I did spend some of the advance."

"You what?"

He smiles to himself. "No pressure. I can give it back."

"Do you *have* it to give back?"

He laughs and glances at her, eyebrows knitting. Is she serious? "Uh, you do know I'm loaded, right?"

She snorts and shakes her head. "Well, yeah, but I mean, isn't it entailed and tied up in investments and stuff?"

So. . .she knows something about being loaded, or she's just guessing? Her mother must have a good deal of money. "It is. Not all of it, of course, and I definitely have enough to give the advance back. So don't let that influence you."

"No."

"No?" He's honestly shocked she said no. He wants, wanted the excuse to be with her. Now what-?

"No, I don't mind. I. . .I kinda like having you around, pulling my pigtails."

He grins widely, squeezes her hand, his chest expanding with that adorable look on her face, half shy, half stubborn. Oh, to hell with it. Rick takes his hand out of his pocket and transfers her cold one to his warm one, lacing their fingers together, putting their clasped hands back in his coat pocket, where it makes it harder for her to let go.

She jerks to a stop, staring at him with an arch to her eyebrow. He tugs her forward, keeps her going. If he stops to address this, she'll take her hand away from him, and he just got it.

Pulling her pigtails. His lips quirk.

"Pulling your pigtails? Is that what the cool kids are calling it these days?"

She bumps her hip into him, hard, glaring at him, and he knocks off course, running into a man *way* bigger than him. The big dude growls (seriously, growling?), and Kate snickers beside him, her hand still trapped in his coat pocket.

"Sorry, sorry, my fault," Rick mutters, backing up and keeping her behind him. Just in case.

The dude flexes a bicep and acts like he's going to swing at him; Rick flinches but doesn't duck, stands his ground.

Big guy hmphs and moves off; behind him, Kate pushes on his back to get him going.

They keep walking, her face limned with amusement, a little bit of apology. But she'll never say she's sorry, will she? Nope.

"See what you did?" he frowns at her, keeping her fingers warm between his. "Nearly got me knocked out."

"You weren't supposed to just take it, Castle. You're supposed to laugh and *run,*" she says, a smile playing around her mouth. So she *does* have a playful side. He thought so.

"I was afraid to turn my back on him. And I wasn't sure you could keep up with me."

She draws herself up, narrowing her eyes at him. "If there's one thing I know how to do, it's run."

She's so hot (well, that kind too), that she doesn't seem to notice what she's said. Of course, Rick is itching to write it down. He finally gives in and reaches into his inside coat pocket for his notebook. But he's got his right hand in hers and he is *not* letting go.

But that statement was just perfect. His character will definitely need it. How to do this?

He groans, then grins as he gets an idea. "Here," he says, shoving it at her. "Write that down for me."

"Write what?"

"What you just said. I can repeat it if you need me to."

"You write it down. Your hand's not broken."

"No, but I'm afraid if I let your hand go, I'll never get it back."

She opens her mouth to fight him, but she must realize that denying his statement means giving her hand back after he uses his own to write. She sighs instead and looks at his notebook.

"How am *I* supposed to do this one-handed?"

Rick grins and reaches across, uses his left hand to drag the pen out of the spiral top, uses his teeth to yank the top off, recaps the end. When he hands it back to her, he sees she's used the time to flip open the notebook. It's a random page, not in order, but he doesn't care.

She stops, gestures for him to turn towards her. He does, facing her, still with her hand laced through his, warm and tight in his coat pocket. He rubs his thumb over that hand, watches her eyes flicker to his.

Kate sighs again. "Here, hold this." She slaps his notebook against his chest and he raises his hand to keep it in place. Kate braces with her forearm and poses with the pen to the top of the page. "Go."

"Use quotes."

She makes the two hash marks, rolling her eyes. "Okay. Now, go, Castle."

"If there's one thing I know how to do, it's run."

Her hand falters the moment he gets to the payoff, but she dutifully keeps writing. He can see the pale in her cheeks, the lack of movement in her eyes. He wonders if she realizes just how far into her head he's managed to get.

Probably does now.

She swallows and leans away. He still has his hand against the notebook at his chest, can't help remembering the feel of her leaning against him, even if it's just by that one forearm. Her hand in his tightens, her fingers slip through his. Probably on accident, but she doesn't try to pull away, even then.

Her head tilts towards his. "So after three weeks of following me around, you know me that well, huh?"

He nods, not daring to interrupt. She glances at his pen, uses her long fingers on the cap to push it off, twirl it around, recap it. She tries to hand it over to him, but he's kinda stunned silly. Castle can't help wondering if her tongue can do similar tricks.

Tempting fate, he holds out the notebook to her instead, letting her slide it through the spiral, an act *way* more erotic than he intended. Does nothing to help calm him down.

She blushes and drops her hand, tries to step back, but she's still attached to him at his coat pocket. Rick slides his notebook inside his coat quickly, then turns and heads down the block again, not giving her time to try to pull away.

"I didn't always run," she says finally, as if defending herself.

"Makes sense you would," he says instead. He's not looking for a psychologist's session here. He may know her behavior like the back of his hand, but the motivations are still mostly wrapped in mystery. He kind of likes it that way, gives him something to pry out of her later, through whatever means necessary. Hands, or lips, or-

"I tend to. . .hurt people," she keeps on.

He doesn't want or need an explanation. "You don't need to tell me this, Kate."

"You already know?"

"No. No, I - I just mean. It's not a judgment. It's just. . .how you are, Kate."

"But it's so. . .damaged."

He jerks to a stop, glances down at her. Equal parts brilliant and fierce, fragile and blind. How can she be all these things? The woman who coolly decides men's fates, controls the jury with that bedroom voice, demands the room's attention, and also the woman who won't hold his hand without a fight, doesn't know her own heart, thinks so little of herself?

"How are *you* damaged, Katherine Beckett? I've been following you for four weeks, every day with you for three of those, and nothing in you is damaged. Nothing."

She shakes her head, tries to withdraw her hand, but he ain't havin' it.

"No. Not-uh. You don't get to run from this. I'm telling you. You're not damaged. Just complex, intricate; you make 'em work. I like work."

She quirks her lip.

"Okay, not true. I hate work. Most work. But I like working at you."

Her eyes slide away from his. Running again, running in the only way left to her. He sighs and backs off, starts walking with her again.

Retreat and attack from a new direction.

"You have your father's watch. So whose ring is around your neck?"

She stumbles beside him, so badly that he actually releases her hand so he can catch her. She glances up at him, her eyes too wide, her heart beating so hard that he can see her shake with it. But she clenches her fists, bites her lip, straightens up.

"My-my mother's."

He eases his hands away from her shoulders, lets her go. He's rewarded by her digging the necklace out from between her breasts and holding up the ring dangling on the end. He watches it spin in the evening light. He noticed it from the first, but she keeps it so well-hidden, he's been afraid to ask, to appear like he regularly and routinely looks down her chest.

Which he does. Well. He tries not to, but sometimes his eyes. . .drift.

"My mother's wedding ring. She took it off the day he died. I. . .I couldn't bear for it to be forgotten."

"So you wear it instead."

She nods, clenches her teeth, then lifts her head, as if she knows she needs to meet the challenge head on, square jawed. Her eyes are fierce, challenging him.

"I wear it because she won't. Because it means something, even if she doesn't want it to."

_Oh, Kate._

* * *

><p>She lets him take the ring, study it in his palm. Her heart is pounding; she's never told a soul about this. She's not sure why she told him, why she cares what he thinks about her. Why. . .why she cares that he understand the albatross around her neck.<p>

"Kate, what if it's the opposite?"

She shakes her head, lost. Still somewhere in the maze of her family's tragedy.

Castle is still looking at the ring. "What if it means too much to your mom? What if she just can't bear to wear it?"

She gapes at him, a rush of horror chasing her shock. Kate grabs the ring from his hand, presses it against her chest.

"I bet that's why she let you have it, Kate. She wants someone to remember him, but she's shifted the burden of it on to you. Because you grieve the way she can't, the way she wishes she could-"

"Stop."

Kate turns her back on him, but can't bring herself to walk away, can only struggle for breath on the sidewalk, two blocks from her building, wishing so badly he'd take her hand again and make it go away. Make it better.

God, no. What a terrible, stupid, weak idea.

Who is she? Not this.

She straightens her spine and tucks the ring back under her shirt, presses the lapels of her coat closer together, wonders where she put her gloves.

_You grieve the way she can't._

That's going to haunt her all night, isn't it?

"You gonna tell me about your mom now, or am I going to have to keep piecing it together on my own?"

She shoots him a look, starts walking for her building. The ache in her chest eases when she feels him catch up, his hand at her lower back, not guiding her, but there as if he needs reassurance. Waiting.

"And Mike Royce? Do I need to go talk to him instead of you, Kate?"

She shakes her head, neither yes nor no, wishes her hands weren't so very cold.

At the crosswalk, sirens scream in the darkness and two police cars flash past, followed quickly by an ambulance. She shivers and his hand sweeps up and down her back as they watch the strobe lights fade.

At her building, the silence has morphed from awkward and heavy to comforting again, peaceful. It speaks in its own way. He blocks the wind for her while she unlocks the lobby door, holds it open so she can get through.

When she gets to the stairs, he follows her up, his hand on the banister behind hers, his body giving off heat, warding off the chill. The silence stretches around them, like warmth spreading out in a cold room; she stops on the landing to look at him.

Castle waits for her to make a move. A fierce desire wells in her, closing off her throat, squeezing her chest. She won't even look at it, won't even go there. Not right now, not when she knows she's hurt him tonight, and he's gotten too close to it all.

She needs aloneness and books - but not his,_ not his_ - needs the way the night will fold her up in its arms and hide her from the rest of her life, escape and comfort both. She needs to not bear the burden of her mother's grief, her own, her father's missing-ness.

Kate keeps climbing the stairs, rehearsing what she'll say at her door, how she'll kick him out, gently, gently, how she can keep him from falling all over her, falling for her. Like Royce. Like-

She swallows hard and steels herself, has to, because she can't let him do that. Can't give in to the way her body longs for his attention, the attention of his hands, his mouth-

She knows what that is, has had the therapy to help her figure it out; she misses her father, her grief is acute. She won't use him the way she used Royce, Will-

She won't.

He deserves better, more. Everything. He's childish and ridiculous and selfish, yes, all those things, but he's a good man, and clever, and funny. And when he's being selfish, he still somehow manages to turn it back on her instead, manages to make it about her.

In relation to *him* of course. But still-

No. She wants them to be friends; she needs his friendship. She won't ruin this with the ivory tower she's built around herself.

At the door, she doesn't even get a chance to speak before he grabs her keys from her fingers and unlocks it, pushes it open. He drops her keys on the entry table, stands slumped in the door frame watching her.

She stares at her keys for a moment, wondering how that happened, then glances up at him. She's not sure why he's still here. Not sure she wants him to leave either.

"I have a book launch party," he says quickly. "In two weeks. Would you come with me?"

Kate studies him, keeping her thoughts to herself, trying not to let eagerness or adoration show on her face. No. No, she won't do this. Not with him. They've had fun these last few weeks, and he's going to write three more novels based on her, and she is - she *is* - going to keep this professional. Friendly.

Not that friendly.

"I don't-"

"Okay, it doesn't have to be with me. Just. Be there. Please? Show up after me, or at the same time I do. Let me dance with you. Have some free drinks. Give me someone to talk to who isn't my ex or doesn't hate me like she *is* my ex." He tries laughing, but she can hear pleading in his voice, see it in the lines around his mouth.

Pleading. He wants *her* to be there. He needs her.

She's already got him twisted up, doesn't she? She hates how powerful it makes her feel, the overwhelming sense of having him. She *has* him.

"Okay," she says suddenly, her body liquid and hot. If he reaches out and touches her, she's not sure she can say no.

"Okay?" He grins at her, eyebrows lifting, mouth lifting, his whole face looking younger and excited now, boyish again. Charming. Handsome.

Dangerous. Dangerously, ruggedly handsome.

"Can I pick you up?"

She shakes her head. "I'll meet you there."

His grin slides wider; it makes his eyes crinkle up, mere slits of happiness. Her heart pounds.

"Okay then. I'll email you the details. It's a rooftop party, so not too formal. You have something to wear?"

She can't help the quirk of her lips, can't help the surge of control it gives her, watching him all eager and joyful and wanting her. Wanting her.

"I have something," she says, putting her hand to the door. She slowly begins to shut it, crowding him back across the threshold. "Good night, Castle."

"Until tomorrow, Kate."

She lifts an eyebrow, leaning against the nearly closed door. "So dramatic."

"I'm a writer; it's what I do." He puts his hands in his pockets, staring at her.

And because she doesn't want to close the door, doesn't want to at all, she pushes it shut on her own desire.


	5. Chapter 5: It's All Right

**That Familiar Feeling**

Chapter Five: It's All Right

* * *

><p>It's all right, it's all right. . .<br>It belongs to us tonight.

-Cee Lo Green, 'Bright Lights, Bigger City'

* * *

><p>She's gorgeous. Brilliant. When she paces in front of the witness stand, her forehead gets this crease from her hairline down to her eyebrow, a tendon or muscle or vein, he's not sure yet. He wants to put his thumb on it, feel it, massage it away. He wants to be close enough to touch her.<p>

He doesn't need to be here, but he had a meeting with Black Pawn (Gina was there, and he always walks out of those meetings in a dark cloud), and after the meeting, he wanted to see her.

Needed to.

Wanted to. So he texted her mom for her schedule (lame, yeah, but Beckett gets irritated when he texts her during an important case), and then he spent the next hour grabbing her coffee just the way she liked it (grande skim latte with two shots of vanilla and a tiny sprinkle of cinnamon along the top). When he showed up outside the courthouse, standing at the top of the steps, she didn't even stumble. She took her coffee from him, nudged his hip with her elbow, gave him a smile from the side of her mouth, all the while never breaking her stride.

He followed her to the judge's court room and got to sit on the front row behind the prosecutor's table, just the little half-wall and railing between them. He likes to watch her hair shift over her shoulders, wavy and soft-looking. And now that she's up, on the prowl as he calls it, she's just. . .extraordinary.

He writes that down in his notebook. Beckett on the prowl. He needs a name for his character, and soon, as the meeting with Black Pawn reminded him. It's just so difficult to pin down a name when the real thing is so. . .alive. And picky. And strong. And a paradox in every respect.

Beckett's questioning a character witness. Professional and a little too buttoned up. The kind of buttoned up that hides all kinds of wild, passionate feeling. She feels too much; he knows that already.

He didn't know which case he was walking in on this morning, but he wishes it were a different one. It's a little gruesome, another instance of domestic abuse. She told him last week it's the highest felony she's prosecuted to date. She's never nervous, always confident, or at least good at projecting confidence, but he knows that he makes her a little uneven at times. Watching her.

Or he used to. She's pretty damn even right now. She's on top of things, nailing the witness, causing him to trip up on his own words, setting a trap for him that it seems only the judge and Rick can see. No one else seems to notice, or even really pay attention. As terrible a beating as this man gave his live-in partner, not many people seem to care about the actual case.

When Beckett gets the man to admit to witnessing not one but several incidences of less than friendly behavior, she closes out her questions and pivots back to the prosecutor's table.

He beams at her, pride swelling in his chest. She's got to see it, has to know, of course she does, but she never breaks her professional mask. He loves that, and at the same time, he wants to make her break. Wants to be the one she breaks it for.

At the short recess, Beckett turns to him and gives him a slow grin, biting her bottom lip, nodding to his notebook as she brings her coffee cup to her mouth.

He ignores her not-so-subtle inquiry. He hasn't let her read a single thing about his new character yet. Castle wonders if he's afraid she won't like her. He wants them to be friends. Stupid, but there it is. "Very nice, Counselor."

She raises an eyebrow. "I thought you had a meeting."

"It's over. I wanted to see you in action."

"You've already seen me in action."

He grins back, not saying anything to that, letting her own imagination come up with all the ways he wants to see her in action. His attention is distracted by the raised voices near the back of the gallery; he turns his head to look.

Kate is saying something about the defendant's brother, the man she just took apart on the stand.

He grins over his shoulder at her. "You slaughtered him. Seriously."

She's shaking her head, but he can see her own pride in her eyes, stiffening her spine, making her back straight. She's got her laptop open, working on a bit of closing argument he thinks. Her hair falls down over her cheek; he has to clench his fist to keep from leaning across the barrier and brushing it behind her ear again.

The voices at the back escalate, and he turns his head to look, now sees the brother back there, pointing an angry finger towards Kate. Clearly pissed. A woman - he thinks that's the abused woman, not a wife but a live-in girlfriend - she's pushing on the brother's shoulders, her face-

She turns; Rick sees her profile, the terror on her face. His guts clench.

"Kate-" he starts, still watching the angry man as he leans against the woman's outstretched hands, pushing forward.

The brother's face twists, murderous, and in that moment, Rick knows. He knows.

The hand comes up. The gun.

Screams, and the dull black of the gun in the man's hand, pointed.

Rick's already vaulting over the low railing between him and Kate, tackling her. The gun explodes in the court room; something sears his arm even as he wraps it around her neck and pulls-

She topples on him, both of them hitting the floor hard; he rolls to put her body under his even as another shot careens wildly in the room, wood splintering. Another pinging against the floor, ricocheting somewhere nearby. He feels shrapnel lance his shoulder, his cheek.

Hunkered over her, arms braced near her head, he risks a glance, afraid to look, afraid he wasn't fast enough, afraid-

She has her eyes squeezed tightly shut; the clamor of the bailiff wrestling with the furious brother, another shot and a grunt, the screaming intensifies.

Her eyes pop open. "Reggie," she gasps. No blood on her, the pale column of her throat unmarred.

"I don't know; I don't know," he says and raises his head cautiously. The low wall protects them, but it also cuts off his vision. The bailiff, Reggie, could have-

No. Damn. No, it's the brother. He's standing up; he's got the gun in his hand, blood splattered up his cheek, his shirt. He turns around and fires again; another body hitting the floor. Probably the other bailiff.

"Kate." Rick ducks back, grabs her hands and hauls her towards his chest, trying to put her behind his body. She's already getting to her feet, but he yanks her down beside him. "Reggie's not - he's down. Are there more bailiffs?"

"Just next door. And cops, surely, always a cop or two around here."

"Where's that bitch?" the brother roars.

"Oh God."

He presses her tight against him, but she's pushing him away, moving towards the man. "Go. Go-"

"No," he growls at her, tugging her back, further back, letting the wall cover them. "I am not-"

"Go get help, damn it. Or circle around and jump him from behind if you have to be a macho ass. But do *not* squat on the floor with me. I can hide better alone. You're too big."

She makes too much damn good sense, and he's furious and sick with it at the same time.

"Kate-"

"Bitch! Get out here." Another shot and more screaming, a general tide of panic that ebbs and flows as the man moves through the gallery. Screams and gasps crescendo in his wake.

"Go. You big idiot, go now." She shoves on his arm, recoils. Horror on her face. "Shit, you're bleeding. Castle. You're bleeding."

He glances down, sees it, but doesn't feel it. "I'm fine. He was aiming for you. I got in the way."

She puts a hand to her neck, glances back to the gallery; her face is pale and bloodless.

He can't. He can't leave her. "Come with me, Kate."

She turns her head, searches the room, calculating, cooler than he's seen her before. "No. We split up. Go that way. When he gets past the gate, climb over the wall, circle from behind. Get help. Cops should be arriving any second."

"Where are *you* going to be?" he hisses, scuttling backwards even as the man gets closer.

Kate turns, steel and determination, calculated recklessness. "Drawing his attention away from you."

His stomach drops. She shoves on him; they sprawl apart. "Kate."

God no.

"Go. The cops will get him. But you're my back-up plan, Castle."

She crawls away from him, heading towards the empty jury box.

* * *

><p>Back-up plan. Shit.<p>

He goes over the wall, lands quietly, can hear the brother taunting her, can see the spittle flying from his lips. Castle crawls back towards the center of the gallery, heading for the aisle back to the doors, keeping the man in sight just in case. From his angle on the floor, he can see the back of the man's head, the side of his face.

Kate keeps quiet. Good. Stay down, Kate.

He gets into the center aisle, has to crawl over a woman hunkered down, huddling, and gets to his feet, squatting in the floor to stay low.

"There you are, you bitch-"

Castle risks a glance up, half standing, and sees the brother taking aim, can't see Kate but he's aiming-

Shit. No time to get help. He springs up, takes a flying leap towards the brother just as the man steps to one side and pulls the trigger.

Castle's shoulder and injured arm collide with the man's back, the tackle going awry because of the sidestep, the guy staggering, one hand coming up behind himself to grapple with Rick.

Only one hand on the gun. Castle reaches in and slaps it away, but it gets hung up; the brother is rearing back and bellowing like an animal, trying to shake him off. Rick drives his knee into the man's back, throws an arm around his neck in a choke hold. The brother brings both hands up, the gun barrel skirting dangerously close to Rick's forehead; he ducks, wrenching his body, and brings the brother down with him, landing on their sides on the floor.

The man moves to get his knees under him and Castle uses the full force of his body weight to heave him over and pile drive his back into the floor. He can feel the ribs crack under his elbow. The man grunts; the gun discharges; Castle reaches for it again, grabs him by the wrist and beats the man's hand into the floor.

A fist slammed into his face stuns him, sends his head snapping back, but he sees Kate from the corner of his eye. The brother does too; moves the gun to take aim. Castle slams his fist into the brother's face, feels his hand explode, feels the flesh give and bone break, not sure whose.

At the edges of his vision, her spiked heels running toward them, grinding into the man's hand. The brother screams. Castle uses both fists in the man's face, pummeling him; the gun releases, her foot, the gun clattering away; the line of Kate's leg, the bloody hand, hands.

Castle raises his fist only to have his arm caught; he glances back, up, her face, wide and breathless and intent, intense.

He swallows, lowers his hand. Gets off the brother, the man's blood on his knuckles, his hands throbbing, his arm hot with pain.

"Castle."

She reaches a hand out for him, but a rush of police officers and paramedics is on them, flooding between them to get to the guy, to take Castle by the arm, to shine a pen light in his eyes, to move her further from him.

One of the plainclothes cops stops at her, a hand on her shoulder. "Yo. Beckett. You okay?"

She nods, gives him a tight, controlled smile. "Fine. Not my blood." Her head gestures towards Rick; the cop turns and studies him.

"Nice work." His voice drips sarcasm. "Still, we could've saved you some cracked knuckles if you'd let us take the shot."

"The shot?" he says, dazed. He hisses in pain as the paramedic probes his arm. The bullet traced a path down the back of his tricep, knicked his elbow. A path that had been heading straight for her throat. He clenches his teeth through the sting; he'll take it. He'll take it so long as she still breathes.

"I had my gun drawn, finger on the trigger when you leaped up. Damn near killed you. What did you think you were doing?"

"I'm sorry. Who are you?" he spits out, his blood seething all over again.

"Detective Esposito. And who the hell are you?"

"This is Rick Castle. I told you he's been shadowing me." Beckett steps cleanly between them, eyeing them both. "Castle." Her voice is soft, gentle; she pushes the detective away with a hand. It's just them now. Just the two of them, even with the paramedic probing the wound. "Hey there, Chuck Norris."

He gives her a half-hearted smile, takes a breath.

"How're the hands?"

He winces as the paramedic begins inspecting his fingers. "Excruciating."

She gives him a slow, confident smile. "Did you hear them?"

"Hear who?"

"The police. The cops were just next door; they came in and yelled for him to drop his weapon-"

"I didn't hear them. All I heard was that asshole." Rick nods his head towards the guy they are already loading onto a stretcher. The neck brace is coated with blood from the man's mangled nose. Castle feels a swell of pride for that, but grunts when the paramedic rotates his hand. "He was aiming for you."

Over her shoulder, Esposito gives Beckett a long look, a look Castle can't understand and doesn't like, and then the cop looks back at him, the stern mask unwavering as he steps in closer. "I had him."

"I wasn't going to take any chances."

"Thank you. Both." But Kate draws closer to him, pushes him to sit against the low wall, away from the detective. The paramedic is back at his shoulder, cutting away the sleeve of his shirt. His hands have been wrapped in tight bandages that make them throb.

Esposito sighs from his place in the aisle. "Beckett. I'll need witness statements from you both. Sit tight, yeah?"

"Yeah." She watches him walk away; he hates it. Wants her eyes back on him.

"Kate."

She turns; something dark and sad is in her face, something he doesn't like. Like she's afraid for him.

But she doesn't move away, stays leaning against the wall separating the gallery from the court, and slowly slides her hand to his right one, lightly, gently, tugging on the end of the gauze. She glances to the paramedic, then to his face and slowly unwraps it, loosening it, her fingers delicate and warm and caressing. She rewraps the gauze, her thumb brushing over the back of his hand, holding his in both of hers, a connection and a thank you in one.

And even that hurts. But-

He'll take it.

* * *

><p>The paramedic cleans out the crease in his arm from the bullet, coats it liberally with antiseptic, sticks a long line of butterfly bandages over it and wraps it up. Kate watches intently, then interrupts his whining argument with the medic to promise that he will - he will - make it to the hospital.<p>

She drives. He needs to get his hands looked at, make sure there are no broken bones, and the elbow as well, could be bone fragments embedded in the wound. He needs an x-ray. It will take some time. She has called the office and cleared her schedule; they give her the time unequivocally. They have a therapist on call for everyone in the court room today, but she knows she'll be on the phone to her own, setting up another appointment.

Castle put himself in danger for her. He-

She swallows hard. She can't think about it right now. Focus on him. The fact that she was in danger, that her life was threatened, seems somehow inconsequential.

"Are you okay?" she says softly, taking a moment to glance at him.

The back of his skull is leaning against the headrest; he turns and his eyes open to look at her.

"Kinda regretting the fists of fury."

She quirks her lips at the amusement in his voice, amusement and chagrin both. "I think those first two punches did the job; you could've stopped any time after."

"You were impressed."

"I was horrified." She was, actually, horrified. By the way he threw himself at the guy, the way he disregarded every notion of common sense to fling himself into danger. Like her father. And her father was dead.

"Naw, I can tell. My manly agility and - what did you call me? Chuck Norris? - my Chuck Norris skills. . .totally turned you on."

"Pretty much the opposite," she says, lifitng an eyebrow at him and turning into the hospital's underground garage. And even as she says it, part of her - a dangerous, terrible part - feels tender towards him. He. . .he attacked a guy with a gun. For her.

No. Not good. This is not good.

"You're hot for me. Admit it, Beckett."

She shakes off the mood, rallies. "Did you hit your head on the way down?"

"No. Why? - Oh. Funny."

She smirks, pulls into the first space she can find, snags the government vehicle parking tag from her glove box to hang in the window. Castle moves slowly, which does worry her. She shuts the car door, waits for him by the trunk, watching him critically.

"I'm getting there. My hands hurt. Both of them, so, you know. Makes it difficult."

"Stop being a baby," she says, but she threads her arm through his and leads him to the emergency room doors. "I know a couple guys here; I'll try to get one of them to fast track us. Okay?"

Suddenly her heart is pounding, her pulse racing. Like the fear has just now decided to kick in; adrenaline dumping into her bloodstream.

"You know a couple guys?" He sounds petulant. Amazingly, it does soothe her, focus her again. "How is it you know guys everywhere? At the bar, at the courthouse, cops, doctors-"

She quirks her lips, tugs on his uninjured arm. "Jealous, Castle? The hotshot writer?"

"Hell, yeah. I am. You probably have a couple other writers lined up-"

She squeezes his arm. "Just you."

He sighs dramatically. "I can never be sure about that, can I?"

Kate stops in front of the open doors to the ER, waits until his eyes land on hers.

"I'm a one-writer girl, Castle."

His whole face breaks into a grateful and hesitant smile, as if she's given him a gift. Or a promise.

One she never intended to give.

But there it is.

One and done.


	6. Chapter 6: At First Sight

**That Familiar Feeling**

Chapter Six: At First Sight

* * *

><p>I'm alive this evening;<br>It was love at first sight.

-Cee Lo Green, "Bright Lights, Bigger City"

* * *

><p>When that detective cop guy, Esposito, finds them in the ER semi-private room, Kate follows him back out (Castle really doesn't like that) to make some kind of witness statement. Esposito promises (with an infuriating wink) to come back for his next, but in the meantime, Castle is waiting for a doctor to read his x-rays and let him out of here.<p>

The door closes on the two, and he lays his head back with a sigh.

He closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of the hospital, tries to block out the throbbing pain in his hands. His right is worse than his left, but both are tender, swollen. He hasn't even been given any ice packs or pain reliever. The admitting doc wanted to do a CT on his head but he refused that; he just wants out of here.

He wishes Kate would come back.

The door snicks open and he lifts his head, eyes widening at the sight in front of him.

Johanna Beckett shuts the door behind her, evaluates him carefully, her eyes brimming. She's immaculate in a pale lavender silk sheath, a grey pencil skirt, dainty jewelry at her ears and throat. Her fingers are long and graceful when she holds her hand out to Castle.

He shrugs and winces, holding up his own hands. "I'd shake but, well-"

She drops her hand, leans in and hugs him instead, tight and quick, her hair brushing his cheek. She smells like Kate. He takes a short breath and blinks back the strange swimming in his vision. She seems like a good mom, one of those moms who made brunch on Sunday mornings and read the paper out loud to you at the table, one who kissed your scraped knee and teased you for limping, one who gave out hugs freely but meant them every time.

Not exactly quite like his own mother. And not at all what he expected given Kate's. . .reluctance.

"Thank you, Mr. Castle. For saving my daughter's life."

He lets out his breath, basking in her admiration; he can't help himself. She brings it with her. "Any time. And it's Rick."

"Don't dismiss what you did. She's all I have left. You don't know what that means to me."

He's surprised at the way she lays it all out there, every emotion, every feeling, like a buffet line he can pick from. He's too overwhelmed to know what to choose. "I. . .you're right. I don't know what it means," he says finally. "But. She's. . .important to me too."

Johanna meets his eyes and nods once, her posture relaxing a little bit more. She's an attractive woman and she knows it; he can read the conscious gestures in her hands smoothing her hair, the way she takes advantage of every asset. She's used to the public eye, to being in front of the tv photogs and the newspapers' cameras.

"My daughter. . .I think she's lucky to have you, Mr. Castle. And not just because you saved her life." Johanna's smile is brilliant, wide and dazzling, and he wonders if Kate would look like this, smiling.

"Please, it's Rick," he reminds her. They've had only one other conversation, and he knows he came off immature and grasping in that one, so he'd like to hope he's remade her opinion of him by now. "I think I'm the lucky one. She's managed to make things have meaning again, for things to matter."

Johanna Beckett comes closer, sitting elegantly in the chair pulled up beside his bed. "Well, yin and yang, right? Because she's been so much more relaxed since she met you. She doesn't always have that dark cloud inside her. She laughs more. Even around me."

He grins because it thrills him, *thrills* him to think he's had any effect on her at all. "Yeah? She's beautiful when she laughs."

Johanna gives a little noise of surprise, and Castle realizes what he's said, what that must sound like.

"She's a fascinating woman, Mrs. Beckett. I can't help but. . ." He sighs, trails off. There's no good way to explain it. Especially not to her mother. She just. . .takes all his attention. He's riveted by her.

"You can call me Johanna. All right? I'm not so formal."

_As Kate_, that seems to imply. He nods. "So. . .you have some time to answer a question?"

The older woman looks startled. "Yes. I - I guess so."

"Then how about you tell me a few things I can't figure out?"

Johanna's face could never be described as closed off, but she does grow wary at his question, carefully regarding him. "Perhaps."

"Why is Kate so serious, so formal? Because you're. . .not anything like her."

Johanna jerks back as if he's slapped her, the sting of that observation rippling on her face. He wishes he could blame his rudeness on pain killers, but he doesn't even have that. Just an overwhelming need to know and the looming sensation that Kate could be back at any moment and he'll have missed his chance.

"I'm sorry. That was. . .not exactly what I meant. It's just that Kate seems to always compare herself to you, but it's obvious that you two aren't built the same. Don't think the same. Is it. . ." He trails off again, realizing that his real question lies somewhere under this.

Is she more like her father?

And Castle doesn't know why, but it seems vital that he know.

Johanna glances to the door, as if expecting her daughter any second, and then back to him. "We may look alike on the outside, but no. You're right. We aren't. . .built the same. Kate's like her father. They both feel things - he felt things -" She stammers on the verb tenses, but she doesn't look away from him. Her eyes are on his like she needs the link, the lifeline, to keep her grounded. "Kate feels things too much. Too deep. I don't know. I adapt, or I don't feel it as deeply; I can dig out faster. I don't know which one it is."

"I think you feel just as much as Kate does," he says softly. He can see in her eyes just how much she feels, in her whole body as she sits in the chair. She doesn't push it away like Kate might; she suffers through it, lets it ooze out. Finds relief in release.

Fascinating. Johanna telegraphs her emotions with every line of her body, as well as her words. No hesitation, no compunction. Castle has learned to read the subtle shifts of color in Kate's eyes, the slight tightening around her mouth, to know the vagaries of her emotional weather.

"Maybe that's true. I don't know how to reach her all the time. In that place she goes where all her grief wells up. She always seems to be treading water." Johanna raises a shaking hand and pushes back her hair, a gesture so much like Kate that his chest squeezes. "But I think you reach her. Your books made a little. . .passageway inside. And that lets you walk right in."

His books did what?

Castle blinks and sits up, unconsciously flexing his swollen hands and causing jolts of pain to shimmy through his nervous system. "My books did what?"

Johanna sighs, her hands to her forehead, then she stands up. "I guess I've done enough damage. Kate. . .she's a reserved person. Perhaps I've let out too many things she might call secrets."

"You can't stop there." He tries to swing his feet off the bed, still in his jeans though they took his shirt and gave him a hospital gown. "What about my books?"

Johanna reaches out and brushes her hand over his cheek; he feels the sting of open wounds and ducks reflexively.

"You jumped in front of a bullet for my daughter."

"Well. It wasn't a conscious thought. I was just trying to get her down before the bullet could reach her."

"And the back of your arm there? The scratches in your cheek?"

"Ricochet. And, yeah. The one on my arm was. . .headed for her."

She fingers the edge of his sleeve above the bandage. "Wrong place, wrong time. So. . .tragic."

"But it turned out fine. No tragedy here," he says, watching Johanna's eyes as she travels to some other place.

"It easily could have been. I can't tell you about the books, but I can tell you about my husband. He jumped in front of a bullet too, Rick. He did a good thing; you did a good thing. If a little. . .reckless, lacking in good sense as my daughter might say. Kate won't. . .like the similarities."

Oh. So that's the reason for that look in the courtroom, the sadness and regret on her face. She's going to distance herself from him, isn't she? She already is.

He sighs, forgets himself for a moment, forgets who this woman is in front of him. Not the Mayor's Chief of Staff, not even Kate's mom, but a woman who knows. Understands. "Even if she hates me for it, I'd do it again. I tried to get us both to the floor, my arm was hooked around her neck to pull her down. The bullet came from behind me, the trajectory was straight for her throat. She would've died. I can't - couldn't - wouldn't do it differently."

Johanna lays her hand on his chest, avoiding his wounded shoulder, concern and gratitude shining in her face.

A noise startles them both. Castle glances to the door and sees Kate, her hand on the wall as if to hold herself up.

"Mom?"

Her face is white, devoid of emotion. Something dark in her eyes.

"What are you doing?"

Oh no. Oh, Kate, no.

* * *

><p>Her heart pounds and she wants it to stop. Slow. Not stop. Slow down. She wants off.<p>

Esposito is at her back and she turns suddenly to him, standing taller than the male detective in her high-heels. The shoes she bought last week with Castle in mind, because she likes being almost eye-level with him, as close as she can get, but now-

Now Esposito backs up to give her room, having to look up slightly at her, and the feeling of being in charge, in control of things, gives her back some steadiness. No, her mother is not hitting on Castle. Yes, she's seriously messed up. She needs to get her head on straight.

"He's in there," she says to the detective and walks off down the hallway.

After a few seconds, she realizes she hears her mother coming after her. Her mother always does. Never lets things go, always wants to talk it out, fix things, make it better. She can't do that right now because she *knows* the jealousy is irrational and ridiculous. She loves her mother. She doesn't want her mother to see this. She doesn't want Castle to see this.

She takes the first detour she can, slips through swinging double doors, down a hallway, and through an open doorway to find herself in a doctors' lounge. A familiar face lifts his head from the table, frowns at her.

"Kate."

Damn. Not today, of all days. "Oh. Josh. Hi."

She might be the only woman she knows who isn't attracted to the super hero, to the guy who wants to save the world. Is it seriously too much to ask for a guy who just wants to stay at home? Be with her? Not get himself killed?

He half-stands, tossing his pen at an open book. Travel guide. Where to now? Haiti? Sudan?

"What. . .are you doing here, Kate?"

She takes her eyes off the guidebook. "A friend is here. There was an incident in court."

"Someone punch out your friend?" he asks. He has a tone. She hates that tone. She should go.

Still. She can't help but pull punches. "No. Someone shot at me. He saved my life."

When she pivots and heads for the door again, she hears him scramble to grab her, but she's gets by too fast and he's in the doorway, calling her name as she strides down the hall.

It's the shoes, just that extra couple inches of height. She really can run faster in new shoes.

* * *

><p>When Kate finds her way back, (she was lost for about five minutes, finally had to show herself to a security guard who escorted her back out to the main corridor), Castle isn't in his room.<p>

No one is in his room.

The bed is in disarray, his chart is gone. A line of blood stains the sheet.

Her mouth drops open, and she spins around, glances down the hallway. A nurse who looks familiar is carrying an armload of charts.

"Excuse, miss? Where did they take him? Richard Castle? He was right here-"

"I'm sorry. I can't discuss patients unless there's a signed release."

"Wait. No, I brought him in. I just stepped out for a minute. Did they take him back to x-ray?"

"Ma'am. I can't confirm or deny any patient activity."

Can't. . .what? "But I was here with him. Richard Castle. Just look him up."

"It's a violation of HIPAA regulations to even tell you if such a patient exists."

Kate stares, and the woman rushes off down the hall.

But.

He was right here.

She just-

Kate pulls out her phone, debates her next move. If he's in x-ray again, then he won't have his phone on him. She actually doesn't know where his phone is, since they took some of his belongings when he got here.

His chart isn't on the wall outside, and now a nurse's aide is pushing past her and stripping the bedsheets.

Like he was never there.

Kate turns back to the hallway, pushes down the unreasonable panic that has started to clutch at her. There's nothing really wrong with him, just bruised knuckles and a gash down his arm. Nothing is wrong.

But why would they take him back to x-ray? If it's just that, then they shouldn't be stripping the bed and putting on fresh sheets.

She glances down at her phone. Her mother was here. But no, her mother went after Kate, who was acting like an unreasonable idiot, and so her mom won't know either. Esposito was here with him, getting his statement. She doesn't have Esposito's number though, has no idea-

She could call the 54th and have them connect her through dispatch.

Kate presses her lips together, starts walking towards the waiting room to have something to do. If she calls Esposito's station just to get in touch with him, she'll never hear the end of it. And Esposito won't either; she'll have burned that bridge.

Josh? If she calls Josh, he might could look up Castle's patient information and let her know. . .?

Would Josh do that for her, after everything? Probably not. Actually, by the look on his face, he probably would. She just doesn't want to have to use that old connection for this. Not when-

No.

She'll just have to text Castle and hope he can get to his phone. Wherever he is. Because it's not that big of a deal. It's just. . .a shock. To find the bed empty. And the blood. And him gone.

That's all it is. He's fine.

She'll just text him.

* * *

><p><em>Where are you?<em>

Castle sighs and leans against her car.

_Stuck. At your car. You walked off, but I don't have a ride back, Beckett._

After a few minutes, he wonders if he's pissed her off again. His hands ache, even to text, which means writing is gonna be so much fun tonight (but he can't *not* write, not after today). He just wants to go home and pop a couple dozen advil and drop into his couch for awhile.

Then he sees her heading across the drive, long legs, high-heels, hair billowing out behind her in a sudden gust of wind. She walks with purpose, her eyes on him, dark and shuttered. Her look is an apology, but he's not willing to let this go wordless. Not after today.

She could have died. If he had been two seconds later, the bullet wouldn't have just grazed his arm and shot on by. It would have lanced through her throat-

Even though he hears the car locks disengage, he waits for her, staring back, needing more than that look.

"Beckett?"

She stops in front of him; he's leaning against the driver's door to make sure she can't leave without him. Her hand is clenched around the keys.

"What happened to you?" she asks.

"Me? I got discharged. What happened to you?" he retorts. He wants her to say it, that she was jealous. Admit that it gets to her, because she wants him. And just like him, she doesn't want to share.

Her head turns, eyes away from him, watching nothing or everything. What does it matter? She's always going to do this, jump to the wrong conclusions, think the worst of him. She's jealous, but she's nursing her wounds instead of talking to him about it.

"Never mind," he says, and lifts off the car, making his way towards the street. He'll call a cab. Start over again tomorrow, back at square one.

"Where are you - why - where do you think you're going?" she calls out, some of that steel back in her voice.

"I'll get a cab, Kate. No use. . ." He waves a hand behind him, still not looking at her. She's damaged; she mentioned that. And while he's a nice enough guy, he's not sure he can be whatever it is she needs from him. Not today. Today he nearly watched her die - twice - and he needs to write it all out so he can go back to being whatever it is that she needs him to be.

Probably her father. He can't be her father. He's already someone else's.

* * *

><p>She can't believe he's walking away. Now? After-<p>

"Castle. Get your ass back over here." She won't walk after him, but she'll be damned if she's going to let him walk off. When he still doesn't stop- "Now, Castle."

His shoulders draw up, he jerks back around. As if involuntarily on his part. It's the shoes. It really is.

Kate decides to meet him halfway - or close to halfway - and takes a step towards him, arms crossed over her chest. He seems to want an explanation, and for her to know she hurt him, walking off earlier. Fine. They're both being immature. She, at least, has had the therapy sessions to know it.

"I was irrational; I took a walk. I prefer not to make a scene, especially where my mother is concerned. Public image and all that. Excuse me for recognizing my issues and handling them."

He's half-turned towards her. "Running away isn't solving your issues."

"I didn't say I solved them," she bites out, taking another step, her face set. "I handled them. I did what I had to do to keep it from getting out of hand. So stop acting like a five year old and get in the car."

He pivots now, faces her. The distance between them makes her hands itch to reach out, but she won't. She won't. She is stronger than that.

"A five year old?" But she swears she saw his lips quirk.

Relief rushes through her, so swiftly that she practically sways on her feet. She didn't realize just how it important it is to her that he not walk away. That he understands. "A handsome five year old?"

He does lift his lips into a half-smile, looking at her from the side of his face as if not yet fully committed. "Handsome. Is that all?"

"Ruggedly handsome," she adds, allowing herself one step closer. Still not even away from the car, so it's all right. She hasn't gone after him.

"I really am ruggedly handsome," he says, brushing a hand through his bangs, self-consciously. She sees him wince and is reminded of why they are here in the first place.

"Get in the car, Rick. You can tell me what the doctor said and moan about how much pain you're in."

He starts walking back to her, quick-stepping. He's got on a blue scrub top that makes his eyes look grey, his coat is flapping in the wind. He comes closer, brushes past her to get to the passenger side; she reaches out her hand and closes them around his wrist, lightly.

"Don't do dangerous, reckless things," she says softly, but she lets him hear the ultimatum underneath. "Not for me. Never again."

He shakes his head. "I will always, always, risk myself to save your life, Kate. That's not going to change. You just better not put your life in danger."

She lets herself absorb that, take it on the chin, and then she opens her eyes and shakes her head. "Don't make me regret this."

"What _this_, Kate? Following you around or. . .us?"

She blinks, wants to drop his wrist, back up, but that's running away, isn't it?

"There is no us," she says finally, her heart in her throat, no longer pumping, struck dead. And that's a running away too. It seems running away is all she can do.

"Like hell there's not," he says, shifting closer, twisting his wrist to grab hers even though it must hurt him. It has to hurt him. "We don't talk about it, so I don't know *what* we are. But it's there; we're something."

He sounds angry. She doesn't know what to do with this, how to go. She's never had someone call her out, never had someone confront her with the truth. Her mother just always tries to fix things, make things go easier, and her therapist just listens, parrots back her own emotionally damaged nonsense in slightly different words so she can hear how she sounds.

But Castle is *claiming* something.

"I don't. . ."

"You do." His confidence is unnerving, but she can't stop watching the fierceness that flares to life in his eyes. "You know you do. I want it. And you want it too. It can be so very very good, Kate. With us."

Her heart pounds, writhing in her throat, an alive thing that beats at her. She can't move, can't refute him, but can't give in either.

Kate watches him lean closer, the distance between their mouths growing ever more minute, his breath skirting her lips, his lashes low, dusting his cheeks as he comes for her.

She steps back, feels his hand suddenly at her shoulderblade, keeping her close, the fingers trailing up her spine now at her nape, burying in her hair. Still he hovers, waiting, and she won't, she can't, but he's waiting on her, for her, and she just doesn't-

His thumb hits the hard tendon at her neck, pushes a little; tension flows out of her, makes her shoulders slump, her body sway into his, meeting his lips unintentionally.

Soft, gentle, unresisting. She shivers, and he grips her neck harder, brings her closer. His mouth slants over hers, his teeth at her lip, tugging, and then she parts her mouth to him, letting him in.


	7. Chapter 7: Cocktails and Conversation

**Familiar Feeling**

Chapter 7: Cocktails and Conversation

* * *

><p>Cocktails and conversation;<br>music and making love.

-CeeLo Green, "Bright Lights, Bigger City"

* * *

><p>He shows up at her office with a white box wrapped in a gaudy orange bow (guady was the word Alexis used when she saw it; he thinks it's just bold). He flicks the bow at Beckett and drops it on her desk, grinning.<p>

He's got that kiss ever-present in his mind, and when he looks at her now, standing in front of her window with the sun coming in, he sees instead the dark shadows of the hospital's parking garage thrown across her face, and the moment she knew he was going to kiss her, that vulnerable look in her eyes. He will never forget it.

She glances at the box and then back to him, eyebrow raised. "What's that?" She looks like he's given her a pet snake, and he hopes, once she opens it, that she knows that the kiss has nothing to do with this.

Kate's a complicated woman. He's not sure *what* she'll think. "Open it."

Kate sighs at him but drops her notepad and pen to her desk and reaches for the bow, untying it with a long tug on the ribbon.

He bounces on his toes and holds his breath as she slowly lifts the lid. It's agonizing, watching her peel back the paper and-

"Your book," she breathes, lifts her eyes to his. He sees everything there. She doesn't hide it. When did that happen?

"Yeah."

She opens it to the title page immediately; her eyelashes lift, those beautiful, disturbing pools of darkness now settling on him.

He signed it: _For Kate, When one hero goes down, another takes his place. Yours, Rick Castle._

"Sorry it took so long. Publisher was dragging her heels." More like Gina was being a bitch, as usual, but no point in bringing up his ex-wife. It would ruin the look in Kate's eyes, and he wants to preserve that look for as long as he can.

"Wow. I-" She closes the book and places her palm on the cover. Storm Fall, his last in the series, looks good in her arms. Looks better than it is. "Castle." She sounds both overwhelmed and disbelieving.

"I wanted to get it to you last week, when. . .when I asked you to the book release. You are still coming, right?" He shoves his hands in his pockets and watches her face as she rubs her palm over his book. He wants to capture that hand and bring it up against his chest, let her feel the way his heart pounds.

"Of course. Yes." She jerks her head up to look at him again, blinking. "Friday. Right?"

He breathes a little easier. "Yes. Friday. Can I-"

"I'll meet you there," she says quickly, interrupting him, making his next question moot.

Ah. All right. So he still won't be picking her up. "There's going to be a lot of press, obviously. I'll meet you there, save you the red carpet, but can I dance with you?"

She slips him a slow smile, her eyes devious. "You can dance with me." The amusement lines her voice like velvet.

His palms are sweaty. He can't maintain debonair even for a second around her. "Can I kiss you?"

"Now?"

Oh, wow. So now all he's thinking about is kissing her in her office, leaning her back over the desk and seeing how well they might fit together.

"Castle?"

"Now. Now would be good. And later. Both."

She glances slowly to the door, then drags her eyes back to his, a command clearly written there. He jerks back awkwardly, fumbles with the knob, gets it locked.

"Now would be good," she says, throaty, still with his book in her arms.

He wonders - briefly - if this is a fantasy of hers, to kiss the author of the Derrick Storm novels. Because he knows from her mother that his books created a passageway through her grief. And he knows from Kate's own lips that Derrick Storm is her hero. (Whom he killed, but let's not dwell on that). Only question is-

How much does she really love Derrick's author?

Castle closes the distance between them, reaches out to gently remove the book from her arms. She seems reluctant to let it go, her eyes drift from the book on her desk back to his face, and something firm and resolute settles across her mouth. He waits to see what it might mean.

Beckett narrows her eyes, as if studying him for the best approach, and then lifts up and presses her mouth against his, her hands grabbing at his jacket. Nothing about this kiss is gentle or tender, nothing about it reminds him of Kate. It's all Beckett, dominant and sexy.

He forgets his carefully laid plans, dives into her mouth with abandon. She wars with him for control, her fists pulling him in or pushing him away, her tongue sharp and strong, cross examining him with cutting deliberation.

At her mercy, and liking it, Castle drops his hands to her hips to hold on, his thumbs finding their way under her shirt to taut skin.

She breaks their kiss with a last graze of her teeth at his bottom lip, leaving him breathless.

"Now was very good," she whispers, the throaty sound of her voice destroying the last vestiges of his control.

"What about now?"

"Again?"

"Again. And again-"

She chuckles, the sound reverberating in the room and vibrating his body. Beckett pulls back another inch, too much space between them, and smooths her hands down his jacket, as if to make him presentable.

"I have work to do, Castle. So you can either stay and stare, or do as your editor suggested and write a character sketch, finally pick a name for her."

He sighs, can't help curling his fingers around her elbow and tugging her in again, pressing a warm, damp kiss to the corner of her mouth in promise.

"How can I? You're terribly distracting, Katherine Beckett."

She hums a laugh and pushes him away. "You're exaggerating. Go write."

"Not so. You drive me wild," he says, capturing her fingers with a leer, knowing it will get to her. The lecherous comments always do, as if she can't quite believe him. Like he thought, she narrows her eyes at him and tugs her hand away. Driving him wild. . .something clicks in his head and he wonders where his pen might be; there's one on her desk-

"You're fine, Castle. Let me do my job."

"I brought my laptop," he says, pulling his bag off his shoulder. "You work. I'll write. We'll do it together."

Something alluring flickers behind her eyes; he has no idea what that was, what his words might have triggered in her.

"Is that what we're doing here?" she says suddenly, curling a hand into a fist. Castle stares at her, wondering how they got from teasing and sexy to suddenly serious and. . .what? She's not mad, not angry, just. . .intense.

"I don't know what we're doing here," he admits, shrugging at her. "But I like it."

"This together stuff. . ." She trails off, shakes her head as if she might change her mind, as if she might have doubts. "I mean. Together. . .at the book launch?"

No. Unacceptable. "What about it? We do this together, Kate. You want to arrive separately, fine. But we do this together."

She swallows and nods once; relief courses through him. She traces her finger over his novel. "If we do this together, you have to promise me we'll fly under the radar."

He's not sure how to promise that, but he'll do anything-

"I promise."

She drives him wild. He needs to write that down.

* * *

><p>Under the radar was her own suggestion, but the dress her mother holds up drips sex appeal, screams <em>notice me<em>. Kate sighs. "Mom-"

"Oh come on, Katie. Live a little."

Kate's holding a sensible navy dress, square cut neckline, which stops at the knees and offers minimal sex appeal, and no screaming whatsoever. She's tried it on in front of the mirror twice already, and she loves it, she really does, but it's because she feels safe in it. She feels in control.

The dress her mother is offering. . .she would never feel safe in that.

"Mom, reporters, cameras. You know what that's like. I can't pull that off, especially if they're taking photos. It's not me."

"It can be you, though. Come on. Just try it on, Katie." Her mother offers her that tempting, beautifully pleading glance, holding the dress out again.

Kate wanted something formal from Macy's but her mother bypassed the department store with a look of disdain and headed for some of the most expensive boutiques on the square.

"You need this," her mother says again, pushing her back towards the private fitting rooms. "And I'm buying. So try it on."

Kate bites her lip but doesn't object, lets her mother take charge. Johanna Beckett's style is always tasteful, elegant, and classy, but this dress. . .

Red. And that says it all. Red dress, strapless, heart-shaped bodice with detailing that shines like gold. Faintly Oriental impression to it. When Kate gets everything zipped up, she stands there gaping.

She looks. . .seriously hot.

"Mom-"

"This is good. Look at you, Katie-"

"Mom, I'm not going for. . .for this. It's not - it's amazing, it is. But it's too much. I can't."

Her mother glances up from the image in the mirror and finally meets her eyes. "All right. Okay. A compromise then?"

Kate's shoulders slump. "Yes. Sure. A compromise."

"I saw something out there. Let me go get it. You stay here."

As her mother quickly leaves, Kate realizes she's been played. Her mother has tricked her into a compromise by shoving her into one of the sexiest, most revealing dresses in the store, and she'll come back with something mildly breathtaking that looks fairly tame in comparison. And Kate will agree to it, and take it home, and have the image of *this* dress in her mind's eye as a reminder of how much worse it could have been.

Damn. Her mother is good.

Johanna comes back with a white, knee-length cocktail dress that borders on an evening gown. Kate peels off the scarlet dress and allows her mother to slide the cool white silk on over her head. The straps meet behind her neck with a dark grey alligator pattern that transitions to rhinestones in an X as the dress exposes a wash of skin and the curve of her lower back. Um. A *lot* of skin.

The form-fitting skirt shifts with every movement. Her bare shoulders, the deep V of the straps, the disappearing pattern of grey alligator skin fading to white as it cascades down her torso. . .

If her mother had presented this to her at the beginning, she might never have even put it on. But now-

"Katie, you look absolutely gorgeous."

Sensual rather than sexy. And she likes it. She really does.

"What about my hair?"

Her mother sighs. "I can't believe you cut it so short last year."

"Yes, but now, mother. What do I do with it now?"

She's managed to grow it out to her shoulders, but it still spikes on the ends and at the back. Kate sometimes gives in to the spike and styles it that way on purpose, and sometimes she flat irons it, lets it make a straight curtain over her eye.

She's noticed that Castle likes it straight, and in her face, because he strokes it back, slides a finger along her forehead to see her eyes.

Her heart clenches and she meets her mother's look in the mirror.

Johanna smiles softly. "You're thinking about him."

"Who?"

"Him. I can see it. You looked like that when you-" Johanna stops, shakes her head. "Your hair. Let's curl it. Big, soft curls. And then pile it on top of your head; it'll take a ton of pins. You have beautiful cheekbones, the line of your jaw-"

Kate flushes as her mother strokes her hand down her cheek. She knows that her mother was about to compare this now to what she had then, with Will, but not even almost mentioning Will can unmake the beauty of this dress.

She feels alive in this dress. Like she can make Castle fall to his knees and beg. Delicious.

"Want me to do your hair?" her mother is saying.

"Oh. Yes? But you can't - I mean, don't -"

Johanna laughs and clutches Kate's shoulders. "I promise to be long gone by the time you have to leave. But I get to take a picture, right?"

"Mother, this isn't prom," she sighs, rolling her eyes.

"You have to let me get a picture. Remember how your father always took photos of us every time we went out? We have so many pictures-"

Kate's chest squeezes, but for the first time in a long time, talking about her dad with her mother doesn't make her want to sob.

"Yeah. He said the camera loved you," Kate says wistfully, biting her lower lip.

"Sweetheart, the camera *adores* you. So let's get this dress, and go buy you some shoes. More like those heels you got recently and less like those terrible clogs-"

Kate laughs and glances at the heels she hasn't yet been able to stop wearing. The ones that put her almost at Castle's height, just shy of his eyes, where she can reach his mouth.

"You're blushing," her mother says shrewdly, helping her get the dress off carefully. "You really like him."

"Who?" she says again, prolonging the secret joy of having him all to herself.

"Rick Castle. Don't even deny it."

She won't. Not at all. Because she's shopping for gorgeous dresses with her mother and recalling fond memories of her father and she feels like it's all his fault. Or well, no. It's not his fault. He just happened to open a window in her dark house of grief, let the light shine in. And now she finds herself stepping outside, enjoying the day. So that, even if she never sees him again, she knows she won't go back there, to that cramped house. She'll stay in the house of mirth instead.

Was she really so brittle before? And now. . .now so strong.

* * *

><p>Gina keeps trying to get him to wear the sunglasses before he makes his entrance, but he can't imagine what Beckett would say to that. She'd laugh, for sure. And the pathetic thing is, he's pretty sure that six months ago, he'd be wearing the sunglasses like a playboy jerk.<p>

Not now. He wants Kate to be proud of him when he walks in.

Which is another kind of stupid thought, but he can't help looking for her as he waits in the staging room, handlers all around him. He has a limited view of the door that leads to the elevator which will take everyone to the rooftop party, but he's pretty sure he hasn't seen Kate yet.

She did promise. And she seemed to be looking forward to it. He really wants to see her before he goes out there. It's somehow vital that she be there, that he know she's there.

Castle's not sure when he got so needy, but it's not pretty. He'll have to work on that. Kate Beckett will only tolerate strength, he thinks. She doesn't suffer fools gladly.

Gina makes another stop in the staging area, calling out last minute instructions, handing him a pair of Ray-Bans that he tosses back on the table. "It's pitch black outside and we're on the roof-"

"There's klieg lights blazing, Rick. You'll probably need the sunglasses-"

"Stop being so pushy; I'm not doing it."

She raises her eyes to heaven and flounces off, her heels clicking loudly. He can't remember what he saw in her, why she appealed to him so much. Meredith was like his mother but Gina was. . .like a shrew. Still is. He can't fathom it.

Kate is just so-

He should probably not start comparing. It might come out his mouth, and then that would be bad. He's stupid, but not that stupid.

"All right, people. Five minutes till the introduction," Gina calls out. He watches her walk away, turns his head back to the narrow view of the elevator.

He still hasn't seen Beckett.

Castle gives in and pulls out his phone, texts her quickly.

_Where are you?_

_I'm here. On the roof. Waiting for your big intro, hotshot._

He must have missed her. Castle's wide grin as he rereads the text outshines the klieg lights.

* * *

><p>A woman's hand on her arm makes her turn; Martha stands there in a gorgeous riot of color, holding on to a drink and an enormous grin. "Ms. Beckett, my dear, you look stunning-"<p>

"Oh thank you. You look-" how to explain? "-amazing. And please, call me Kate." She offers his mother a smile and takes the drink the older woman plucks from a passing tray.

"Come with me; we've got the best seats in the place," Martha says, herding her to one side of the roof, closer to the bar. Kate's dress fits seamlessly; the white practically shines up here under the night sky, brilliant and pure compared to the garish, clashing colors of the women around her.

His daughter is sitting at the bar doing homework, wearing an entirely acceptable dress that is also attractive. In fact, it looks similar to the dress Kate herself was going to buy in the beginning.

Alexis lifts her head and smiles widely. "Well, that's something different," she murmurs. "You look amazing, Ms. Beckett."

"It's Kate. Please. Just Kate."

Alexis nods and leans back from the bar to study her, reaching out a hand to touch the fabric of the skirt. "It's seriously gorgeous."

"You look pretty great yourself, Alexis." Kate gives her a tentative smile; she's met the girl twice before now and while she shouldn't be so surprised that Alexis is comfortable and easy with her (her father *is* Richard Castle), she can't help feeling like she doesn't deserve it. That's she done nothing to earn Alexis's favor.

Martha is already flittering off to join someone she recognizes, so Kate gives in and steps up to the bar, sliding on a stool with as much grace as she can manage in the dress. She'd rather be inconspicuous tonight anyway.

Alexis puts her pen in the textbook to mark her spot and closes it up. "Kate. Thanks you for this."

"It's no problem. I'm glad to be here."

"No. I mean, I know my dad can act immature sometimes. But he's just a big kid with a big heart. And Gina broke it. So you letting my dad spend the last month or more with you - I don't know if I can explain how grateful I am."

Kate stills; Castle says very little about his second ex-wife. She knows the blood is bad, knows that Castle doesn't like to bring it up.

"I'm happy I can help," Kate says finally, shrugging.

"You know. . .when he killed off Derrick Storm, it was like he went through a period of mourning. Wore black, kept the blinds closed, didn't go out. And then he met you. And all of the windows were open again, the black disappeared."

"He found a new character," Kate says, beginning to feel uncomfortable with how much his daughter is revealing. And isn't that the analogy she just made to explain her own wanderings since her father's death?

Martha appears out of nowhere with a new drink and a calculating smile, waving at an older gentleman as he passes. "New character. Are we talking about Tessa Wilde?"

Kate feels the smile slip off her face. "Tessa Wilde?"

"The character he's basing on you, dear," Martha says, grinning again.

Kate opens her mouth in horror-

The lights sparkle and strobe; applause and flashbulbs, and a maelstrom of media goes off around them at once. Kate blinks and realizes that Gina is making her way to the stage, cutting off the band, and starting her introductions.

Master of the Macabre?

That squirrelly *Master* named her character Tessa Wilde. What kind of name is that? A stripper name. The bastard made her character a-

"-needs no introduction, Richard Castle!" Gina throws out her arms like Vanna White and there's Castle strutting through the crowd from the elevator, cocky and sure of himself, flashing his smile far and wide.

Tessa Wilde? What the hell?

* * *

><p>"This what you call under the radar?" Castle gapes at her, forgetting to blink, forgetting to breathe. This is why he didn't see her come in; he would never have expected. . .never have recognized her like this. Like *this.*<p>

At his side, Gina makes a noise and tries to tug him away, but Rick slides his arm out of her grasp and steps closer to sensual, sexy, smoking-hot Katherine Beckett.

The counselor blushes but lifts her chin, something dangerous in her eyes. "Castle. You named your character."

Gina makes a movement towards Kate but Castle shifts his body to block her forward momentum, heading her off. He turns over his shoulder to his ex-wife, tries not to snarl. "I'll mingle; don't worry. But first, Kate."

He ignores his ex and takes Beckett by the elbow (Beckett? no, hell no - Kate), drawing her off to the side, thoroughly enjoying the expanse of creamy skin at her back, the mole next to her spine that he wants to bend over and puts his mouth on, stroke the curve of her muscle with his tongue-

"Tessa Wilde? Castle. What the hell kind of name is that?"

"Hey. It's a good name. Passed the first round of field testing with flying colors-"

"It's a stripper name, Castle. A Girls Gone Wild Name."

"Well, she's a lawyer by day and by night, she's-"

"If you say stripper, you will be eating through a tube, Richard Castle." She's glaring at him fiercely, the fire in her eyes so much more beautiful against the contrast of the white, snake-like dress.

"Kate. You're gorgeous. You're killing me in that dress," he confesses, stepping closer just so he has to avert his eyes, look over her shoulder as he embraces her. Doesn't work out quite like he hoped because now he can feel the warm skin beneath the dress, every taut slope of her body, every line-

"Lawyer by day and *what* by night, Castle?" She pushes him back, all kinds of cutting in her eyes.

"Crime fighter. Half superhero, Kate. You said Derrick Storm was your hero. I wanted to show that Tessa Wilde, herself, is the hero. She doesn't need anyone to rescue her."

She sucks in a breath and turns her head away; her hand comes up as if for balance, catching hold of his forearm.

"Kate?"

"A hero."

"She's brilliant and gorgeous, and she doesn't take no for an answer. She's tenacious, and stands up for justice. And, well, kinda slutty."

She snorts and shoves on his arm, still gripping him, but the horrified expression has tamed to a kind of fond acceptance. "Tessa Wilde. I should've known it'd be something like that. . ."

She shakes her head at him, dropping his arm, but Castle catches her fingers with his, his thumb brushing against her palm in a contact at once intimate and unfamiliar.

"Kate," he murmurs, drawing her back to him, brushing his other hand along her hip. Silk and heat. Heat. He should've thought of that one.

She turns her head back to him, her eyes lined with a black that faintly shimmers, like glitter has been sprinkled along her lids. The smooth, uninterrupted angle of her jaw makes him want to put his teeth against her skin, press until he feels the hard edge of her bone. He raises his eyes back to her gaze, sweeps down to take in the dress, her body in the dress. _Heat_, sure, but there's also _cool_ in her as well, steel, and _wild_ works better, makes you understand at once what he's getting at.

"Have I said you look. . .absolutely. . ." All the words he wants to say just seem so wrong, so false in the light of this white purity, this sensual and scintillating creature that used to be Beckett, has been Kate, but is now something. . .entirely new.

"Absolutely what?" she murmurs back, almost too low for him to hear.

He leans in and brushes his lip against the sharp, devastating line of her cheekbone, trails a path to her ear, feels her struggling to contain a shiver.

"Beautiful. So beautiful, Kate." He wishes he didn't sound so desperate when he says it.

Her arms slide under his jacket and around his back, pressing him in close, her lips at his jaw, moving to his mouth, feathering promises. Desperate seems to work.

With a soft, contented sigh, Castle lets her make those promises, intent on holding her to them.

* * *

><p>He called her beautiful. And can't keep his eyes off her.<p>

He called her beautiful. And he's bragging that he's been following around the smartest ADA in the city. He called her beautiful.

She feels equal to anything tonight.

A cluster of fans are let up on the roof, carefully escorted by security. Castle's mother explains to her that the fan site has a drawing for every book release party and ten lucky winners get to attend.

Kate doesn't need the explanation because, embarrassingly, she's a registered fan herself (sigh); she feigns interest and watches the women - the girls, some of them - turn to mush in front of Castle. One woman offers her chest to sign and he takes the pen-

He does what?

But he's shaking his head at her and grabbing her hand, scrawling his name on her arm, winking at her. Flirting like there's no tomorrow. The woman is laughing, no doubt swearing she'll never wash her arm again; Castle makes nice with her and turns to the others. He knows how to work a crowd.

She wants to stalk over to him and kiss him full on, slip her tongue over that smile and into the rich warmth of his mouth, claim him in front of the whole gaggle of girls. Let them write about that. Let them all know.

Not quite flying under the radar.

Three kisses and she's giving other women the evil eye. Three kisses and she wants a reporter to make a splash about them. Three kisses and shoes that push her up to his mouth and a dress that makes Castle look like he's lost all of his pretty words-

Tess Wilde. Seriously?

She shakes her head and turns back to the girl doing her homework. "Do you usually come to these events?"

Alexis hums and lifts her head, her mind obviously elsewhere, lost in some pre-calculus rabbit hole. Her eyes focus on Kate. "Oh. Yeah. Most of them. They're pretty tame."

This is tame? "You watch your father. . .sign autographs? All that?" Kate's fascinated by the girl's sophisticated nonchalance. She's had her own troubles with her mother's public appearances, her own issues with press conferences and tabloid feeding frenzies, but here's a girl who has grown up with it all and seems unaffected.

"All that." Alexis shrugs, then looks up again, seems to pull herself away from her homework. "It's not who he is, you know. That guy out there? That's not my dad. It's a persona. An act. And it usually drops the moment he comes back home with me."

Something in Kate's chest eases. Something she didn't know was tight. "A persona. That's a good way of putting it. I wish my mother could figure that out." Kate accepts the second glass of white from the bartender, but only cradles it. "Your dad ever have trouble dropping that persona? Because it's impossible for my mom."

"Your mom. . .works for the mayor, right?"

"Hmm, yes." Kate sighs and wishes now she'd kept her mouth shut. Tonight isn't about her mother.

"Dad had trouble dropping the persona, yes. And so he killed Derrick Storm."

Kate turns startled eyes back to the girl. "He did?"

"And then he met you," she says, and her vision is firmly in the here and now, no longer residing with the open textbook or the math problems.

"Me."

"And the persona fell apart." Alexis closes the book, shuts her notebook, stacks them together. "See? Even now. . .you can see my dad through the cracks."

Kate swivels her head to look at him, knowing instinctively where he is among the rooftop's crush of people, finding him easing his way out of a woman's hold on his arm. Cracks indeed.

"I see."

"So. Thank you for that."

"I didn't do anything." Except roll her eyes at him. Except put him in a courtroom where a man tried to shoot her. Except take him to Remy's and spill her secrets.

"You did enough," Alexis says firmly, then places her hand on Kate's shoulder, pushing her. "See the way he keeps cutting his eyes back over here? He needs rescue. So go, Kate. Rescue him."

Be the hero.

* * *

><p>All it takes is for Kate to show up.<p>

She gets within a few feet of the group of people clustering around him, hanging on him, (in previous years, he might have said adoring but tonight it feels like what it is - false), Kate's just a few feet away and they melt back, as if sensing her, sensing what she is. Her claim.

Castle meets her eyes with gratitude welling up, reaches out across the distance, his hand open to her. She glides foward and takes it with a little squeeze, giving a couple of photographers their perfect shot. He holds his breath, but Kate Beckett doesn't even hesitate.

"Can I have this dance?" she says, her lips half-curling.

"And all the rest," he murmurs, drawing her in close, arm around her waist.

"Such a girl, Castle," she laughs, leading him out past the people still milling around him, towards the parquette floor set up in front of the stage. It's not slow dance music, but she slow dances him and he lets her set the pace, dazzled by Kate Beckett in this dress.

"If you'd let me lead," he grumbles, but can't help turning his lips to her cheek, nuzzling her jaw with his nose, seeing how far he can go.

She jerks, but it's another flash (and not his touch, he hopes), and then she's curling her hand at his hip and turning her face into his as well. Not a kiss, but a glance of her lips.

"Do they bother you?" he asks, stroking his thumb over the silk of her dress.

"No."

"Really?"

"My mother is always in front of the press. Means I am too. I avoid it as much as I can, but things happen."

"I looked you up," he admits. "After that day we met. Saw your photo in the archives online."

"Oh?"

"You helped the mayor run on a promise to clean up crime-?"

"I helped my mother. Who helped the mayor."

He strokes his fingers lightly over the bare skin at her back, the liquid loveliness of Kate Beckett filling his senses. "Either way. You're used to the photos? The speculation."

"Yes."

"Does it bother you?"

"I already said no, Castle. What do I care what they say? The DA's office thrives on publicity. Even if it's bad, or unfavorable, your name is known. That can be a good thing."

"Do you want to be the DA?"

She grins against him, tucks her hand into the pocket of his jacket, tugging a little, then sliding her palm up his chest. He feels breathless.

"I don't want to be the DA. No. I want in the investigative division of the DA's office. And I might could use some publicity if I'm going to get there."

"You're my perfect woman," he sighs, then laughs as he realizes what he's said. "Uh. Well. Yeah, there it is. I'm not gonna apologize for that."

She brushes her mouth over his jaw, pulls back. "Don't apologize. If it's the truth." She has a wicked look in her eyes, both arousing and clever, with some tenderness at the back. Kate Beckett in this dress. Who would have ever known?

"It's pretty darn close." To perfect. To the truth.

"But no one's perfect," she adds, as if pleased with that answer. He shifts them further to the side of the stage, closer to off the dance floor than on, wanting to get her alone.

"This isn't really under the radar, Kate."

"I realize that."

"So you just decided to throw it out the window?"

"I saw you and. . .saw you see me," she says, and he thinks she sounds a little breathless.

"I did see you." He doesn't get it.

"The look on your face."

"Oh. Oops. Did I-?"

"Maybe so. But let's just say it was an ego boost, Castle. And then I didn't want anyone else thinking they had a shot with you."

He grins, ridiculously happy. "They don't. Not a chance."

"Well. The poor things ought to know what they're up against," she purrs. Purrs. In his ear. Her hand curls now around the back of his neck and her hips shift closer.

"You mean who they're up against."

"Huh?"

"Not what. Who. They're all up against you, Kate Beckett." He lowers his hand and sweeps her in closer, pressing her against him so she feels every inch, so he can do the same, cursing himself for it but needing it like air.

* * *

><p>It's not the shoes, not the dress. It's not even the way the women here keep sneaking glances over at them with undisguised curiosity and a trace of jealousy. (She hears them whisper something about the great white whale; visions of Ishmael and Ahab in her head.)<p>

But it's not those things. It's not even the man.

Although the man has so very much to do with it, it's not all him.

It's her.

Is it just finding herself on the other side of dark grief, or is it the concurrent events of meeting her favorite author and finding herself the object of his fascination, discovering that she is, at all, fascinating?

Kate finds her hand in his, loosely, as he leans across the little gathering and gives a one-armed, formal air-kiss to a woman in a tight-fitting dress, her lips in something that could be a sneer, Castle's hand at the woman's elbow but falling away.

"Kate Beckett, meet my publicist, Paula-"

"We'll need to handle this, Rick," she says, as if in an aside. "And Kate Beckett. Good to meet you. Prosecutor, if I remember right. You won't mind if you and I sit down and talk a little?"

"Paula. Stop."

Kate twitches her hand in his; he gets the message and backs down, looking at her.

"We can talk. Though I doubt you're going to like me very much," Kate says honestly, giving the woman a slow smile meant to defray the cost of those words. "I have a tendency to do the opposite of whatever anyone thinks is best for me."

"Well, we're gonna talk about what's best for Ricky though, so I don't think you'll have much to worry about."

Kate laughs, conceding the point. "Fine. Lunch next week?"

"I was thinking tonight," Paula says, crowding closer and edging out the man at her side.

"No," Castle says, putting a hand out to stop Paula. "And not tomorrow. Monday, Paula. I get her first."

"Get me?" Kate says back, raising an eyebrow at him but tremors of delicious anticipation running through her. He has plans for tomorrow? For the whole weekend? For her?

His eyes dart back to hers, assessing, and then he grins in the face of her false indignation. "Yeah. You heard me."

Her shoes just aren't tall enough, are they? She'll have to remedy that.

Paula has her blackberry in hand and is thumb-typing across the keys. "So, give me your contact info and we can get this-"

"No." Kate smiles as she says it, but turns her back on Paula. "He's got me now. I'll let *you* know about Monday."

She tugs and Castle comes, following her back to the bar. She laughs at the look on his face, feels his hand tighten around hers. He crowds her against the bar, orders over her shoulder as the bartender comes up.

"Two," he says and she turns her head to narrow her eyes at him, at this game of dominance they're playing.

His chest is warm against her back, his cheek just too close to resist. Kate offers a small brush of her lips to his skin, feels his hand draw up around her waist, their fingers tangled so that she feels the silk of her dress as if through his own senses.

"You've got to stop that," he says. "My daughter is just down the bar from us."

Kate laughs, bringing a hand to her mouth, ducking her head to see Alexis at the far end. "Do you have any idea of how terrible that sounds - your daughter at the bar?"

His lips dive to the skin behind her ear, teeth nipping, before he lets go and steps away with a sigh. Her body is tingling with awareness, with promise.

All weekend. He has plans for her all weekend.

How did this happen?

The bartender sets their drinks down in front of them and she remembers the two previous glasses of house white, debates the vodka tonic in her hand. Castle looks like he's about to throw his back, but he holds it instead, turns to her.

At that moment, a commotion from behind him distracts her, eyes drifting to the flock of black-clad men angling across the roof. Her heart catches when she glimpses the guns, but immediately after that is the shine of their badges.

Cops. Detectives. She reaches out and takes Castle's drink from his hand, puts it behind her on the bar. He catches her line of sight and turns just as the men approach.

"Richard Castle?" The lead man holds up his shield, a notebook in hand, his coat open. He slides his badge into a spot on his belt, puts a hand on his hip, eyes taking them in. "I'm Detective Ryan. I need to ask you a few questions."

"This about the shooting?" Castle says.

Ryan's face washes with curiosity, and something else, something of a hunter scenting prey, but a little too eager, like a cub still learning. "Shooting?"

Kate steps up, putting her body in front of Castle's. "I'm Kate Beckett. I'm a lawyer. What is this about?"

"You're. . .*his* lawyer?" Ryan narrows his eyes, shares a glance with a man behind him.

"Yes," Castle answers from behind her. "She's mine."

And the way his voice strokes the word, she knows what he's saying, and what he's not saying. But the detectives clearly don't.

"This isn't about the shooting," she says. "You want to tell us what it is about?"

"What shooting, Ms. Beckett?" Ryan says, too friendly, too eager for a detective. Must be how he got to where he is. So innocent he can't possibly be a threat, then look out.

"In the courthouse. Last week," she supplies. "During my case." She adds the last on a sigh, giving over the information they'll find anyway. "I'm an assistant prosecutor with the DA's office."

Ryan and the men with him immediately relax, throwing her friendly looks. One at the back jostles forward to meet her eyes, gives her a nod. She recognizes him, vaguely. _You have guys everywhere._

"Oh, that's good. You don't mind answering a few questions for us, Mr. Castle, do you?" Ryan gives them both that open, innocent smile, but she doesn't believe it for a second. She grabs Castle's forearm, squeezes to keep him silent, and shakes her head at Ryan.

"You want to wait until after this is over?" Kate says, gesturing to the rooftop filled with guests. "He's kind of the man of the hour."

She feels Castle shift beside her, knows he wants to make a smartmouthed remark to that one. He restrains himself, thank goodness.

"Actually, I'd like to take him back to the 12th to answer these questions, Ms. Beckett."

Formal interrogation?

"What is this about?" she asks sharply.

Ryan hesitates, but she can see it playing out over his face. It's serious. It's very serious.

"It's about a murder." Ryan gestures and two detectives come forward. No one has cuffs out yet, but it looks like they're completely willing to make a scene.

Kate turns to Castle. "Don't say a word. You understand me? Nothing. I'm coming with you."

She shoots a deadly look at Ryan. "Let's go. Quietly."

And to keep up appearances, and because she needs it suddenly, Kate slips her hand in Castle's and squeezes.

He turns his head and brushes a kiss against her cheek, but he doesn't speak.

She kisses him back, not caring who sees. "Good boy."


	8. Chapter 8: Never Have to Wonder

**That Familiar Feeling**

Chapter Eight: Never Have to Wonder

* * *

><p>So I'll never have to wonder if<br>I'll have someone to share all of it with.

-CeeLo Green, 'Bright Lights, Big City'

* * *

><p>"For a man who makes a living with words, you sure as hell have a hard time finding them when it counts." Ryan gives him a long, assessing look. His words have heat to them, but his voice is steady, almost ironic.<p>

Rick shakes his head again, wishing Kate would come back. She stepped outside the interrogation room to speak with the Captain of the 12th Precinct; she told him she was calling the DA. She told him to keep his mouth shut. He's trying to do as she says.

"Come on, Mr. Castle. Roses on her body. Sunflowers on her eyes?"

He keeps his mouth shut, just like she told him, but everything in him longs to defend himself. His body quivers with a grief-stricken ferocity that makes his skin crawl, his hands clench in fists.

He needs Kate.

"You think we don't read? We wouldn't notice?"

Detective Ryan and his partner have already spent the better part of an hour going over his rap sheet in meticulous detail, reading aloud from the arrest reports, Kate's hand on his thigh the moment the police horse incident was brought up. She didn't look at him then, but he knew she had lingering. . .

He didn't buy her; he didn't. Despite the look Ryan gave Beckett when she followed him out of the party. Despite the raised eyebrows when she took the opposite side of the table from the detectives.

He suddenly realizes just how. . .dangerous it is for her to have his back in this when her job requires she back off and let these guys work. To the boys in the 12th, it looks like Beckett is switching sides.

Castle's mouth goes dry.

"Alison Tisdale, Mr. Castle. She's dead. This whole bad-boy charm thing you've got going? Maybe it works on bimbos and well-" Ryan waves in the general direction of the closed door, clearly indicating the woman beyond it. "-her, but it doesn't work on me. Or the justice system."

Castle jumps to his feet, staring down at Ryan who hasn't moved, doesn't flinch. "You don't say a word about her. Say what you want about me. But don't you dare open your mouth and disparage Kate Beckett."

Ryan watches him.

Damn. Shut your mouth, Rick.

His heart pounds, but he sits his foolish ass back down. He wants Kate in here. He needs to talk to her, get her to leave this alone. He's innocent of course; he didn't murder anyone, but he doesn't want her name blackened by all of this. Just working on his side, just being here with him might have already endangered her job.

And he knows her job is her crusade, her job is the way she deals with her father's murder. She needs her job; he can't put that in jeopardy.

Ryan leans in, his eyes hard. "You may have a prosecutor girlfriend running around triyng to make this disappear, but Alison Tisdale is dead, Mr. Castle. That doesn't disappear."

He knows he's revealing too much with every flicker of his eyes back to the door. The guiltier he looks (even if he's not guilty) damns Kate in their eyes. He needs to get this back under control.

Back to the bad-boy charm, as Ryan put it. "I can see that," he says dryly, indicating the pictures strewn over the table. "But I didn't kill her."

Ryan sits back, tries a different tack. "Did you ever meet her? Book signing? Charity event?"

Ants are crawling up the back of his neck, but he makes himself sit loosely in the seat, lazy and clever, slipping back into his easiest, and most fun role: playboy. Go with what works. "It's possible. She's not in my little black book, if that's what you're getting at. Besides, I haven't-" He clamps his mouth shut, berating himself. Shut up, Rick. No need to mention that he hasn't dated bimbos and blondes since he met Kate. Don't bring her into this.

"You're telling me you might have met her, you might have gotten-"

The door opens and Rick sees Kate stepping back inside, the DA behind her. Relief pours through him, but her face is tight. She steps up beside him, a hand to his shoulder.

"Castle, this is District Attorney Mark Lyons. He's personally overseeing this case. Mark, this is the novelist, Richard Castle."

He can tell by her voice that this isn't shaping up to be as sociable as she'd hoped. Castle keeps his hands flat on the table.

"You'll excuse me if I'm not thrilled to meet you in these circumstances." He debates commenting about meeting her boss, but lets that go. Kate is close at his side, eyeing Lyons warily.

The DA nods to Ryan, faces Castle. "Sorry if you've felt uncomfortable, Mr. Castle. Just asking questions."

"I've answered them. Repeatedly," he pans, flicking his eyes up to Kate. She looks serious; he doesn't think that look means anything good for him. Lyons catches the look and shoots an assessing glance to Beckett; Castle ruthlessly clamps down on the urge to break his arm for it.

"You're lucky Ms. Beckett went to bat for you on this one. Because on the surface of things, it doesn't look good."

He swallows, put in his place by the thought of Kate sticking her neck out for him. "The flowers, the arrangement of her body. It's like my book." Kate squeezes his shoulder tightly, meaning he should shut up. He closes his mouth. But damn, he wants to defend himself.

"Ryan noticed the similarities. I think we've already established you have no alibi at the time of her murder. That alone, you might be facing charges right now."

If that were true, if he were, Lyons wouldn't look like he swallowed something sour. Castle keeps his composure, forces his hands back in his lap, looking at ease.

Lyons gives him a long and deliberate look. "But we have a second murder. A murder your girlfriend here pointed out."

Castle feels her stiffen; curses Lyons for the dirty way he made it sound. As if Kate were led astray by him.

"And it just so happens that she's managed to alibi you out for the second one."

His stomach churns. "A second murder."

And Kate, again, in his corner, defending him.

"Marvin Fisk." The DA opens a file folder and slaps a couple of 8 by 10 glossy photos onto the table. A dead guy. Rick can't help but stare, his writer's curiosity getting the best of him. All the details of a murdered body - the half-open eyes, the swollen tongue, the way the man's skin has erupted into a rainbow of blue tones. Details he'd never have been able to conjure on his own.

"Right out of Hell Hath No Fury," Kate murmurs. "I remember seeing it in the line-up, feeling like it was familiar somehow, but with Tisdale's murder. . ."

His lips quirk and he looks over his shoulder at her. "Really? Angry wiccans out for blood? Only hardcore Castle groupies read that book."

Kate narrows her eyes at him.

"So now that's two murders being staged in the same manner as your books, Mr. Castle. You're off the hook, but you can see why we have questions. Perhaps one of these hardcore groupies?"

"That's. . .I have some fans," he says, shoots a glance to Kate. She gives him a long, hard look, clearly indicating that he needs to shut the hell up. The DA is watching them both, his own gaze as calculating as a hawk. Castle's hackles rise, and he wants to pull Kate to his other side, put himself between her and Lyons.

Ryan flips his notebook to a new page, dictating the pace of the interview, slowing it down again. "You get disturbing letters from these fans?"

"Detective, all my fan mail is disturbing. It's an occupational hazard." He talks to Ryan, but he's watching the DA. He doesn't like the look on the man's face as he regards Kate. Contempt and competition all rolled into one.

"You know," Ryan says slowly. "Sometimes in cases like these, we find that-"

"The killer attempts to contact the subject of his obsession. Yeah." Castle sighs loudly, gets another squeeze from Kate for his petulance. But he's done with this. "I'm pretty well-versed in psychopathic methodologies. Another occupational hazard. And you know, you could have just asked me all this at the party. Or better yet, called my publicist and asked her. Because really, you've got nothing."

The DA wants to make something out of this; he's looking for re-election, surely. Famous novelist being implicated in a murder would do it. And obviously, there's some kind of bad blood between him and Beckett.

Ryan watches him carefully. "So you have no objection to us going through your mail?"

"Knock yourself out." He stares Ryan down, just begging the man to make something more out of this. He wants to pound on something; lacking that, he wants to run his smart mouth and say something cutting and clever that will put them in their place, but Kate's grip on his shoulder stays him. "Now. Are we through here?"

* * *

><p>He calls the car service from the elevator and the driver is outside waiting by the time they get outside. In the car, Kate slides her hand over his knee, strokes his kneecap with her fingers. He looks pissed. And scared.<p>

"Nothing will come of the charges, Rick."

"You shouldn't have been there," he says quickly, turning his head to look at her. The dark car forms a seal around them.

"I what?" She raises her eyebrow. "You clearly needed a lawyer. And don't worry, there was not a doubt in my mind that you didn't-"

"Not that. It's the conflict of interest-"

"You don't trust that I-"

"Kate!" He grabs her knee and squeezes hard, crushing the irritation that has risen up in her.

She shuts her mouth, watches him warily.

Castle lets out a long sigh. "You stuck your neck out on that one. I would've been fine. I didn't do anything wrong and that would've come out eventually. But Lyons. . .it's clear that man is out to get you."

She shrugs. "He can't do anything to me, Castle."

"Your job-"

"Is safe. You think he hasn't tried to get rid of me before? Yeah, he hates me. But he hates my mother more." She slides her hand under his, disengages his fingers from her knee. He lets her, slumping back in the seat. "I called him in on this because as soon as I saw the crime scene photos, I remembered the other case. Professional courtesy, let's call it. Also, I knew the sooner the police get it out of their heads that you did this, then the sooner they get on the right track."

"But Lyons-"

"He can't hurt me, Castle. No one can hurt me," she adds, and she's not sure why really, because that can't be true. It just feels like it's true. It feels like no one can touch her now, even though six months ago that wasn't the case.

"He can fire you. And what about the job in the Investigations division?"

"He can't fire me without my mother and the mayor giving him some seriously bad press. Besides that, I have the highest conviction rate in my department. He can't fire me. He might be able to stall a move into his division, but after this case. . ."

Kate trails off, glances out the window. She tries to get a grip on the all-too-bright excitement that touches her. Who gets excited about murder?

"After this case what?" Castle asks, squeezing her hand for her attention.

"I just gave the NYPD their biggest break. I made the connection. Lyons even admitted it. I get a kind of all-access pass now. This is. . .actually really good for my career. As selfish as that sounds."

She sighs and turns her head to look at him, expecting disbelief or at least some reproach, but his mouth fuses against hers before she even gets a chance. His lips are hot and furious, his teeth nipping at her tongue. She pushes back after a moment, her hands drawn to his chest, gripping the lapels of his suit jacket as if to hold him in close.

He slows, his tongue stroking, sucking on her bottom lip before he pulls away, not going very far, breathing heavily against her mouth. She licks her bruised lip and her tongue inadvertantly swipes at his skin. He gives out a shaky breath and grips the back of her neck with his fingers, his cheek pressing hard against hers.

"What. . .was that for?" she says, trying to catch her breath.

"For being so damn sexy," he mutters, his thumb brushing against her ear. "And because I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to explain to why I nearly asked Lyons for copies of those crime scene photos, explain why I'm taking you back to my loft so I can write for an hour or so."

She chokes on a laugh, her breath still erratic as his hand strokes her side, up and down, doing nothing to soothe her.

"I took pictures with my phone of their murder board."

"You're extraordinary," he groans, his hands gripping her ribs, brushing against the fabric of her dress and making sharp sparks of heat lance through her blood.

Extraordinary. She closes her eyes, tries to concentrate. "Back to the loft, so you can write?"

"There's all this stuff I have to get down, a whole scene for Tessa Wilde based off of that entirely too smoking hot showdown in the interview room-"

"Interrogation room," she corrects.

"Ah, yes. See? I need you for the details. And for your mouth," he murmurs and parts her lips with his, breath mingling, his hand traveling around to her back, scalding her skin, fingers ranging over her spine.

She wants to unbutton his shirt, wants to slide his jacket off and press her mouth to his collarbone, feel it under her teeth. Closer.

"But you understand, don't you?" he says, his voice in her ear both desperate and rich. She has a feeling the desperation is partly because of her, and partly because of the story he needs to write.

"That you need to write?"

"Not that exactly. But that you understand what the story does. Because you're excited too. I can tell, Kate. I can feel it in the way you kiss me."

Yes. Excitement. "It's so wrong. Two people are dead-"

"You think Lyons wasn't riding the same wave? You think that detective hasn't found the one thing he's absolutely great at-?"

"No, yeah." She shakes her head, pushes away from him to get clear, to escape the effect he has on her. But her blood is still buzzing. The case. The connection. The questions.

"You have a copycat?"

"Or. . .something," he murmurs, narrowing his eyes. "Those books are barely connected. Why pick those two scenes? Why not any of the Derrick Storm death scenes? Plenty of those."

She grins, tries to hide it behind her hand but even in the darkness, he sees it. He's been attuned to her since the beginning, she knows.

"See? It's got you too. I know it does."

"It does," she admits, trying to say it like it's no big deal. "But the weird ones always do."

"You got a thing for kinky, Counselor?"

Kate shoves on his shoulder, dislodging his hands. "Not kinky. Just. Strange. Don't make this gross, Castle."

He stays on his side of the car but takes her hand, laces their fingers together. "I'm serious about my place. If you. . .don't mind?"

"You want me to keep you company while you write?"

"For just a couple of hours. Then we can hash out the murders and get back to. . .this." He leans in and traces his lips along her shoulder, moving up to the side of her neck.

She struggles to keep her breathing even, to not let it affect her. "You think I won't, instead, distract you?"

"You can try," he murmurs, sounding pleased. "But you're my muse, Kate Beckett. Instead of distracting me, you inspire me."

"Call me muse again and I'll-"

He smothers her words with his mouth, soft and warm and tender, his kiss like himself, bright and unwavering. She draws her hand up to his cheek, the stubble on his chin abrading her fingertips.

Thus disheveled, all-night-in-a-police-station look is good on him, sexy. But his kiss isn't that, it's less the confident playboy and more the earnest supplicant. She opens her mouth to him and licks the corner of his lips, liking the way he shudders.

"Come home with me, Kate."

"I don't think it's a good idea."

"I'll write and then we can talk about these murders, build theories. Make our own storyboard for it and solve it ourselves-"

Her head buzzes with anticipation, her fingers tingling; the crazy thing is - she's not sure what it's for, him or the chance to work with the NYPD to solve this. She breaks away from his seeking mouth, puts a hand on his chest.

"Solve it ourselves?"

"Prove you belong in the DA's Investigative Division. Clear my name."

It's wrong in so many ways, but oh so right.

Why does it feel so right?

"Kate-"

"Yes. Okay."

* * *

><p>She gets one more searing kiss before he's gone. Muttering to himself in the backseat of the car, head tilted back, eyes closed. At first, his hand is on her thigh in a most distracting manner, but after awhile, she realizes his fingers are twitching and he's mumbling snatches of the interrogation, portions of dialogue. He's repeating it over and over, trying to put on hold the scene wanting to write itself in his mind.<p>

He's the same as her, in this. When she starts thinking about her closing statement, the words come out, the phrases, all of it coming together perfectly. She has to get it down before it's gone. He's doing the same now for his novel.

He's nine weeks behind schedule. She asked a few weeks ago when he was moaning about another meeting with his publisher. Nine weeks can't be overcome in one night. Can it?

She opens her clutch and hunts for a pen, paper, something. She finds a faded receipt in the slim pocket for her phone, left there from probably the last time she wore a fancy dress and took the clutch with her. Years ago.

She smooths the receipt out, sighing at how small it looks, then leans forward to the driver.

"You have a pen up there I could borrow?" she asks softly.

"Yes, ma'am," he says and passes a cheap ballpoint back to her.

She smiles and takes the receipt and the pen and waits a moment, watching Castle. When it looks like he's at a pause, she presses the two items into his hand, trying not to interrupt the flow of his words.

His fingers curl automatically around the pen; he's adjusting the receipt on his knee and scribbling words without even looking at her. After a moment, after a flurry across the cramped page, he turns his head and captures her mouth in an intense but quick kiss.

He breaks away. "You really are perfect." And then he's scribbling over the receipt again.

She holds on to the sight, the feeling of this moment. She knows a year from now, two, this will be the very thing that drives her crazy about him, that he doesn't see her when he's in the middle of a story.

(A year from now? But she knows it's true. It's been only a few months, but she can't remember exactly how it was without him, or how it could ever be without him again.)

If she can hold on to this feeling now, to how good it is to be beside him as he works it out, as the words come, hold on to how right it is that he's still Rick Castle, still the writer, her favorite writer, then she knows it will be a talisman against that future frustration. That future hurt.

Soon she will need to explain. How Mike Royce ruined his entire life for her in a sorry parallel to the way her father lost his life for the people inside that convenience store. How she jumped into a relationship with Will after law school because he was entirely the opposite - unwilling at all to take her into account or consideration when he made his own choices.

But maybe not tonight.

Castle has flipped the receipt over and is scrawling across the purple ink of the register tape, his fingers dwarfing the scant paper. She wonders what will happen when he runs out of space-

He's shrugging out of his jacket and rolling up the sleeves to his dress shirt. He starts at the inside of his left elbow and makes dark marks against the skin, inking a scene into his own forearm.

She watches his lips move as he recalls the lines, the scene tumbling out too fast for his hand to keep up. Kate's breathless with his concentration, his hypnotic and mad dash for words.

Yes. This is what she wants. This man and his pen, his mind, his humor, his hands; the way he smiles at her; the curl of his finger over her wrist as he gets her attention; the intensity of his eyes as he memorizes her every move in front of the jury; the way he watches her walk into the bar and can't keep his eyes off her; the flare of need across his face when he thinks she isn't looking.

And this too: the absorption, the words, the stories that will take precedence over her, the bestseller lifestyle, the daughter she barely knows, the photographers, the book launch parties, the formal dress, the playboy coming out in him, the flirt.

All of it.

He switches the pen to his left hand and rolls up his other sleeve, hesitating over the skin, making a few crooked and sloppy marks. He reaches down instead for the cuff of his pants, starts to cross his leg over his knee when she stops him with a hand.

"Here," she says. "That way I can read it as you go."

She shifts so that she can bare both of her arms at him; he glances once into her eyes to be sure, and then takes her by the wrist, starts at her left shoulder and keeps going.

He adds words to her skin.

Even when the car pulls up to his loft, he's got one hand writing at the tender skin on the inside of her arm, the other on her elbow to keep her still. She guides him slowly out of the car and in through the front doors, realizing belatedly that there are a few cameras out here as well. People who saw them leave with the police at the book launch? Now there will be photos on page six of Castle tattooing her arm. And she's not sure she minds.

Once inside, she presses the call button for the elevator, touches his cheek when they step inside.

"Castle. What floor?"

He stops long enough to push the button. Penthouse of course. He goes back to writing, which she knows now is a cribbed shorthand that she can't decipher. The elevator goes up and he circles around to her right shoulder, starting at the top.

"Keys," she murmurs, the touch of his fingers both sensual and comforting. Her heart seems to reverberate with every beat. Who knew a pen could be so erotic? "Keys, Rick."

She's carrying his jacket and her own, plus her clutch. He doesn't answer, so she feels through his jacket pockets, finds his key ring.

She leads him off the elevator and down the hall. It's the only door on his floor, which means it's all his, the entire top floor.

She uses her left hand to unlock his door, steps carefully through it, feeling that it's somehow so fitting that she walks inside before he does. He pauses in the darkness, a hand clutched around her elbow.

"They. . .probably went to bed," he murmurs. "I texted Alexis that everything was fine and I'd be late. She has a test tomorrow."

Kate feels her grin widen, is glad the darkness keeps him from seeing her. Of course, thoughts of his daughter pull him right back to the present.

She takes the pen from his still fingers and shoves on his shoulder to get him moving. "You go start transcribing this. I'll show myself around, then come find you. So you can get the rest of the story."

The rest of the story on her arms. In her arms. Her breath catches.

"In the study," he mentions helpfully, looking torn.

"Go Castle. This is what you do." She looks down at her arms, covered in black ink. "You did me."

He barks out a laugh and she narrows her eyes, realizing how it sounded. "Yeah, yeah. Go."

"Going. Don't be long. It'll only take a second."

No. It will take him hours, and that's fine. She smiles at him and watches him disappear, then slowly prowls his loft.

Her dress is starting to wrinkle pretty badly now, and she wants nothing more than to be comfortable. She slides off her shoes, dropping three inches at once, and takes them in her fingers towards the back hallway. She passes his study where she sees him typing away on his laptop, the blank page filling with dark, spidery-looking words.

Then she opens the next door, stops breathlessly in the threshold.

His bedroom. She saw the stairs just off the entryway and assumed it was up. . .

She steps inside, noting the dark comforter, the black and white prints along one wall, the heavy bookcases filled with so many titles. A chair beside an open closet door, where it looks like he agonized over his choice in tie for tonight. She doesn't even remember now which tie he was wearing.

She steps into his closet and slowly draws the dress over her head, the silk smooth and liquid against her skin. She shakes it out and drapes it over the chair in his room, then makes a slow inventory of the things in his closet.

She settles on a white tshirt and a pair of his athletic shorts, the waistband rolled five or six times to stay up. She pulls out a sweatshirt as well, letting it drape over her, holding the waistband up some as well. She rolls back the sleeves and pushes them up over her elbows. She'll have to take it off when he needs the words written on her shoulders.

Kate grins to herself and steps out of his closet, taking one last look at his room, the made bed, and wondering, deliciously, if that's where they'll end up.

She thinks maybe so.

* * *

><p>He comes out of his daze with a sigh, saving the document with the keyboard shortcuts, then saving it again twice more superstitiously. When he lifts his head, he sees Kate curled into the couch under the windows, watching him.<p>

Oh, wow. How could he have forgotten she was there? There was a moment when she came back in the room in his goofy-looking shorts and pulled his sweatshirt off over her head, baring her arms, when he debated stopping and taking her right there.

But she deserved better than that. And his mind was still half on the story. But now-

"Damn. I'm so sorry-"

She waves him off. "No. I feel honored."

"Don't," he sighs. "I think we're way past polite here."

"I'm not being polite."

"This is a terrible first date," he sighs.

"Castle. You think I go home with a guy on the first date?"

He jerks his head up, not sure how to answer that one. What he wants to say is that she better never go home with any other guy again.

"This isn't our first date," she says with a slow, spicy smile. "This is like our. . .fifteenth. Twentieth. I think you know that."

He swallows hard and watches the spark of arousal reignite in her eyes. "Yeah."

She unfolds from the couch, leaning forward. The dress is gone; she's wearing his clothes. He blinks at her, can barely comprehend what she's saying.

"You don't know what it means to me. To be able to watch you lose yourself in it. Knowing that. . .in some way, it's because of me."

He scratches a hand through his hair, pushes it back. He can't quite grasp this conversation. His mind isn't all the way back yet.

"You're not finished are you?" she says softly, and a smile is creeping up over her mouth.

"No. But I need to stop, walk around a bit, collect my thoughts."

She stands up and comes for him, holding out her hand. "Then let me tell you a story, and we can get a snack. I'm starving."

His own stomach growls as if on cue and she laughs at him, wide and uninhibited, as if he's somehow made her so very happy.

And he has. He sees the truth of it on her face. He takes her hand and stands up, lets her lead him back out to his kitchen. She goes right to the pantry as if she knows where everything is, and he realizes she must have made herself at home during his fugue writing state.

"You were going to tell a story?"

"Yes. About Mike Royce." She turns her head to look at him, and even though he sees sorrow somewhere in her eyes, she is mostly still filled with light. "About why it's such a good thing you forgot I was even here."

He groans and scrubs at his face with both hands. "I'm not proud of that."

"I am," she says back, setting bread and peanut butter on the counter. "This okay?"

"What?" He glances down at her hands, already unscrewing the jar. "Sure."

"Mike Royce was the cop who came to tell us my father had been shot," she starts calmly, but he sees the white clench of her knuckles on the jar. "I was 22. I had already been accepted into law school, but suddenly it seemed ridiculous to even go. Everything in my life seemed ridiculous - meaningless. Nothing held worth, nothing penetrated. Mike was the one who showed me how to turn that grief into a - a mission in life. A crusade. I was drowning and he was - he was air."

His chest clenches. He wonders when this story will start making him feel better. "He was in love with you," he says, taking the knife from her hands so that at least he spreads his own peanut butter on his own slice of bread. At least he's not making her do all the work.

"Was. Is," she answers. "Still."

He swallows hard and lifts his eyes, but she's not looking at him.

"He was air for me. But I don't know that he should have been. I was in love with him too," she admits, finally lifting her eyes. "In a damaged kind of way. He held himself away from me. At least there's that. I was in law school and my mom was-" she shrugs it off "-he was there. And he made himself into everything for me. He rearranged his whole life; he made me the center. He worked my father's shooting against orders from his Captain."

Castle can't eat while she talks. He can only stare at her hands, still moving on the counter even though there's nothing to do.

"We worked it together," she says softly, shaking her head. "I couldn't see past it. He let me eat, breathe, sleep my father's death. I don't know that it was right. But I guess I needed it. I ruined his life, Castle. He made himself over for me, but after I could breathe on my own. . ."

"It wasn't healthy," he says gently. "You didn't do wrong, leaving him behind, letting him go."

She twists her mouth, turns her head. She clears her throat. "That's what I did. I left him behind. He started drinking. He got kicked off the force. He's. . .not great, but he's okay. But I could never get past all that terrible anger when I was with him. Anger at my father, at the idiot kid who held them up, at the police for not trying harder. He just fed it, kept it going, when what I needed was to move through the stages of grief, not live in them."

He gives her a half smile, surprised at how self-aware she is, even though he did know, on some level, that she's brilliant and amazing and extraordinary.

"So watching you disappear into that book," she says finally, giving him back the other half of his smile. "It's so good. It means I'm still me and you're still you, even though there's this."

He grins at her then, leans across the counter to press his lips hard against hers, tasting peanut butter even though she hasn't taken a bite.

"Thank you for that story."

She draws her hand across his cheek, her eyes tense but happy. "Now go finish."

* * *

><p>He found her a pair of boxers that fit better than the shorts; she pulls them on with her heart in her throat, standing in his room to change. She leaves the shorts thrown over the chair next to her dress, the long expanse of her legs gathering goose bumps.<p>

She needs to wash the ink off of her arms, but she can't bring herself to do it.

"When I first met you, I thought you were a mystery I was never going to solve."

Kate turns her head and sees him in the doorway, watching her with dark eyes. He looks scruffy and thin somehow, as if three hours of writing have sucked some of the life from him. He's just beginning to wake up, his face animate in front of her.

"Have you solved me?" she asks, everything in her turned towards him. If anyone can unlock her, it's him.

He takes a step into his room, his hands at his sides, one arm clouded with words. "Not hardly. Even now, after spending all this time with you, I'm still amazed at the depth of your strength, your heart-" His finger touches her chest.

She swallows hard, her breath disappearing.

"-your hotness." A quirk of his eyes.

She smiles, lips reflecting the amusement in his voice. "Not so bad yourself, Castle."

The moment stretches out, a smooth and endless horizon, shared between them like the start of a journey.

She should go. Before it's ruined, or no longer perfect. But-

Castle steps in closer, bringing his hands up to her shoulders and brushing his fingers over the words he stained her with. "Kate."

Erotic, his fingers over the words on her arms. All of the skin marked by him calling out to the hands that marked it.

"I don't want you to go," he murmurs and brings his mouth to hers, the words between them. His mouth is gentle and barely there, a ghost of what she wants.

He pulls back. His hands trail up her shoulders to her neck, feather soft and stroking the column of her throat, his gaze riveted to the sight. She swallows, just to feel the press of those fingers, to see the way his eyes flare and then narrow, the burn of arousal heating his irises to a molten gold.

She doesn't want to go. But she hesitates.

He swipes his thumbs along her jaw and sighs. "Yeah," he says, to her unasked question. "You shouldn't. We shouldn't. But I have a guest room."

Kate lets her lips ease into a smile, unable to contain it, shifting closer to slide her arms around him, still in his suit pants and dress shirt, tie loose but knotted, sleeves rolled up.

"You have a guest room," she echoes. "I like that."

"I like you," he parries, grinning against her hairline. She can feel his lips there, the sway of his body into hers. "I've got to admit, Kate, my intentions aren't pure. I'm gonna try to seduce you."

"Damn, I certainly hope so."

He laughs softly, fingers skimming her sides, drawing up her shirt.

She brings her mouth to his, finding the heat of him, urging him towards some goal she doesn't yet know herself. He draws her hips against him and she arches, feels his thigh between her legs.

She ripples with need and worries his bottom lip with her teeth, hands at his back for leverage as she feels him lift her off her feet.

Instead of towards the bed, he heads away, back through the door into the hall, letting her slide down his chest only when he gets them to the living room. He tears himself away from her mouth and clutches her hips with his wide hands, holding her apart from him.

"It's late," he says, both apologetic and needy. "And I don't think I could do this all morning without. . ."

Kate glances to the windows, sees the grey light filtering through. Nearly dawn. She feels her exhaustion now, what she mistook for giddiness in her cloud of lust; she leans into him to catch her breath.

He rubs his hands up and down her back, still a little breathless himself. "The murders, Kate. After-"

"Yes," she agrees, thoughtlessly, quickly, not caring. "After that."

His arms tighten. "I don't want to let you go."

"We both need to sleep. Start clearing your name tomorrow - or well, later today."

He nods, but his lips skirt her forehead and nuzzle the side of her nose, travel to her mouth. She parts her lips, licks his pout, makes him shudder. She smiles.

"Don't laugh," he mutters. "You do this to me. It's your fault I can't let go."

She breaks away from him, steps back, catching his hands as they drop from her back. "Tomorrow. And then after they catch this guy-"

"Yes." His look is fevered, but he reigns it in, closes his eyes a moment. When he opens them again, calm has returned. Or at least the illusion of calm. "You don't mind that I want to look into this?"

She does laugh at that. "Not at all. I'm. . .excited. This is what I want to do."

He grins back, an eyebrow dancing. "I know. I can feel how excited-"

She narrows her eyes, drops one of his hands. "Go to bed, Castle."

"Yours or mine?"

She gives him a look from under her lowered lashes, brushes her hand over the top of his forearm, just along those words. "I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to keep my hands to myself, if it were mine."

The calm instantly evaporates and she smiles darkly to see it, a thrum of power echoing in her.

"You know I want to," she gives back. "It's not just you."

"Yes, I know," he says, his voice like black coffee.

She jolts at the sound, remembers again the murders. Alison Tisdale. Marvin Fisk. "But first. There's a copycat killer out there. Using your books. Your words. To kill people. And I hate that; it's not right."

The desire drains out of his eyes; she watches the tension slowly grip him. "I've got to get Paula to send the police all the fan mail. What if he wrote me, warned me what he'd do, but I just blew it off?"

"Don't think like that. We'll get him. We'll do it together," she says. "Partners."

Castle lifts his eyes to her, some of that grief melting away now as well. "Partners," he repeats, giving her a lift of his mouth in a smile. "I like it. Is that a promise?"

She grins back but keeps her distance. Just too irresistible like that, ruffled hair and aroused eyes and scruffy jaw.

"It's a promise." The next word that rises to her lips, she's not sure she should say. Not sure it's time, but it wants out, it needs out; she wants him to know:

"Always."


End file.
